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General guidance (childcare)
Tax and National Insurance Responsibilities
Employer's Liability Insurance
Public Liability Insurance
Travel Expenses for Interviews
Travel Expenses for Staff using their own vehicle
Holiday Entitlements
Duties of Nannies and Housekeepers
Pre-interview advice for child carers
Global Appointments specific
Placing child care adverts
The logon system for child care
Renewing child care adverts
Advert duration (child care)
Specifying multiple child care jobs
Au Pair advertising under child care
Child care pin numbers and advert numbers
Child care advert contact details
Using a phone number if you do not have an email address in child care
Matching job seeker and job provider details for automatic alerts in child care
Guide to payments for Bed and Breakfast section advertising
Guide to payments for childrens entertainment sections advertising
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General guidance (childcare)
Employment in England [and Wales]
Tax and National Insurance Responsibilities
The Inland Revenue does not permit a permanent employee working in the home of an employer to be self employed (*see exception below). The employer is responsible for making payments to the Inland Revenue to cover the employee's due income tax and national insurance payments. The deductions of these two amounts must be made from the employees gross weekly or monthly wage. The employee must be given a wage statement indicating these deductions when he/she receives his/her net wage. The employer must pay total deductions to the Inland Revenue in monthly or quarterly payments.
*Different rules apply to Maternity Nurses and temporary staff.
Click for Tax Information
Employers Liability Insurance
The Employer is responsible for taking out Employers Liability Insurance(ELI). The employer should take out insurance such that in the event of an accident at work resulting in severe injury to an employee, he/she would then be entitled to sue the employer for damages. In such circumstances, if the employer failed to take out Employers Liability Insurance, it could prove difficult for the employee to obtain compensation, as he/she could not then resort to an Insurance Company claim and instead would be compelled to make a claim directly against the employer. This will obviously have financial implications, and may generate problems at a personal level. As an employer you should inform your Insurers if you are about to engage a nanny for the first time, and take necessary action to obtain the appropriate level of ELI.
Click for Insurance Information
Public Liability Insurance
It is the childcarer's responsibility to take out Public Liability Insurance(PLI) to protect himself/herself in the event of, for example, an accident involving a child in his/her care. It is important that the employer ask at interview if the applicant is covered by PLI and should not engage the childcarer without it. In the event that a childcarer is not covered by PLI the employer might have to resort to claiming against the childcarer directly and an appropriate level of compensation could be very difficult if not impossible to achieve. For information on obtaining PLI click on the following link.
Click for Insurance Information
Travel Expenses for Interviews
It should be the responsibility of employers to pay the full travel costs of candidates presenting themselves for interview. When arranging an interview the interviewee should find out in advance whether the employer intends to contribute toward travel costs and make sure they indicate the precise level of contribution to be made.
Travel Expenses for Staff using their own vehicle
The employer should be responsible for the running costs incurred by the employee when using their car during working hours (not simply commuting to and from work). These costs should include petrol, tyre wear, maintenance and excess insurance premiums for carrying children and use of car for business purposes. These expenses should be paid as a rate per mile and be based on the engine size of the vehicle as set out either by the AA or the RAC motoring organisations.
Holiday Entitlements
From October 1999 the European Union working time regulations decree that employees in a country belonging to the union, are entitled by law to 4 weeks' paid holiday per year. There is a qualification period of 13 weeks continuous work for these entitlements.
Duties of Nannies and Housekeepers
This is dealt with in detail under separate pages:
Click here to see the duties of a Nanny
Click here to see the duties of a Housekeeper
Pre-interview advice for child carers
It is important to talk at length with the family or job provider, initially by email,
and finally by telephone, or at the interview. Ideally, try
to speak to all members of the family you will be working with. e.g the mother, father,
elder children, etc. to learn as much as possible about the families you are
considering as potential employers.
The type of questions you should ask include:
- Smoking. If you are a smoker, the house rules on smoking. If you do
not smoke, do any members of the family smoke?
- Accomodation. Ask for a detailed description of your accomodation if you are to live-in.
- Contract. We would advise that a contract be drawn up to set out the duties
of the child carer, the hours of work, rates of pay, and the entitlements including sick pay, length of holiday, remuneration for baby sitting,
out of pocket expenses, pay review dates, etc. You (the employee) should be consulted when the contract is drawn up and feel able to discuss any points you are unhappy with. The final version of the contract should be signed by both parties with a copy to each.
- Leisure. You might like to enquire about the facilities in the area, availability of public transport, etc.
Do not jump at the first job offered. Take time to consider other families. If a family really
likes you they will wait! Moving to and working in another country is a big step, one which you
should not take lightly.
In conclusion try to find out as much information about the family as you can without
sounding too intrusive. Likewise always be open when answering questions put to you
by the family.
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Global Appointments specific
Placing child care adverts
Acquiring a login is a necessary first step in placing any advert. Once this is achieved the owner can place the advert at his/her leisure, although it would be normal to place the advert at the time the login is obtained.
Please note that the terms 'user name', 'userid', 'user' all have the same meaning.
The logon system for child care
There are four operations available:
- Logging in. Whenever you want to work with adverts e.g. change an advert, view adverts, etc you are given a fresh opportunity to login, however this need only be done in the following circumstances:
- You have just arrived.
- Your connection has been broken and you have just reconnected.
- You wish to work with a different login (most users will have only one login).
- Changing your password. You may decide to do this if you believe your login has been compromised, or you have difficulty remembering it. There is an opportunity to do this on every page. Remember that passwords are meant to be confidential in order to prevent unauthorised access to your advert(s), therefore we recommend that you choose a password carefully and not make it easy to guess (preferably use all 10 characters available). The change is carried out for you instantly, and an email reminder sent to your email address.
- Adding additional users to an existing login. This is available to Companies only. We have provided this facility for two reasons:
- To allow another person access to your adverts, using the same password but their own user name. This is typically for use by child care agencies, where several people may be involved with advertising.
- For anyone who has difficulty remembering their user name/userid. The old user name is retained but will fall into disuse, and your new userid will take its place.
- Retrieving forgotten passwords and user names. There is a chance to look up a forgotten password/userid wherever you see a login opportunity. This works by cross referencing using your email address, or dummy email address derived from your telephone number if you gave that instead (e.g. if your telephone number is 01202 998877 the dummy email address would be 01202998877@noemail.com). It is therefore important to always use the same email address or telephone number with your login. It is possible to have more than one login attached to a single email address or telephone number e.g. a family may decide to place an advert for a nanny, and separately for a tutor. Where multiple logins are in use the details of all of them will be shown.
Renewing child care adverts
There is currently no need to renew your advert as it has been set to run indefinitely. When you no longer need your advert, login, go to your advert and
click the delete option.
Advert duration (child care)
Unlimited.
Specifying multiple child care jobs
This is an issue for Job Seekers and Agencies only. Job Seekers may want to have their adverts displayed under more than one job category in a Country simultaneously. e.g. a Job Seeker's main occupation might be 'Housekeeper', but she/he might also be interested in 'Nanny' jobs, and jobs under 'Other'. Global Appointments caters for this with ease, and a Job Seeker is able to place up to 8 advertisements at once, in any Country, in one easy step.
It would be normal for Job Seekers/Agencies to refer to each of the chosen job categories, in turn, in the narrative part of the advert in order to explain to potential employers why they wish to be considered for work in more than one area.
It is important to realise that all such adverts are identical in every respect, and are simply copied to the other areas specified in order to achieve greater visibility, thereby increasing the prospect of finding work quickly.
Au Pair advertising under child care
Advertising for an Au Pair is unique in that, in most cases, the Au Pair will be a foreign national. For this reason we recommend that families advertise not only in their own countries Au Pair family section but also in the Au Pair sections of all the countries they would consider employing an Au Pair from.
Families should specify in these countries adverts summary lines, the country where the position is offered. e.g. An Australian family looking for an Au Pair from the UK or from the USA would advertise in the Australia, UK and USA Au Pair families sections and might write a summary for the UK and USA adverts looking like:
Position offered in Melbourne for an Au Pair (see corresponding advert in Australian families Au Pair section).
Child care pin numbers and advert numbers
GlobalAppointments web site occasionally makes reference to pin numbers. These are used in the internal working of the web site and need not concern users. For example, every advert has its own 15 digit unique pin number, but since user adverts are identified by a user name and password, pin numbers may be ignored. Each advert also has a unique advert number, a seven digit number in the range 0000000 to 9999999. You will see your advert number displayed in the advert summary line for identification purposes. You will need to quote your advert number, if you own one, when reponding to someone elses advert to provide additional information to that person.
Child care advert contact details
We strongly advocate using an email adress in preference to a telephone number as a means of contact. There are several reasons for this:
all users:
- Unlike your telephone number, which must be visible to other users for obvious reasons, your email address, if you supply one, cannot be seen or accessed by others. Therefore you will be immune from junk email when you use GlobalAppointments web site. A user will only gain access to your email address if you choose to respond to him/her by email, out of interest.
families and organisations:
- Should you receive a significant response to your advert you could easily become overwhelmed by telephone calls expressing interest. It is easier to consider replies by email, at a time convenient to you.
- Although the risks are inherently small, providing an email address rather than a telephone number probably exposes you to less of a security threat. You can filter out contacts that appear unsuitable at the outset, rather than having to explain yourself over the telephone.
job seekers:
- Although the risks are inherently small, providing an email address rather than a telephone number probably exposes you to less of a security threat. You can filter out contacts that appear unsuitable at the outset, rather than having to explain yourself over the telephone.
- You have time to consider a response, and gather suitable information with which to word your reply, increasing your chances of being invited for interview. You can provide a telephone number once you are satisfied that you want to proceed.
Using a telephone number if you do not have an email address in child care
If you do not have an email address, or you do not wish to be contacted by email you must provide a telephone number instead. Apart from the obvious reason that it is the means by which you will be contacted, GlobalAppointments.com website requires an email address for internal processes and will create an artificial one from your unique telephone number. e.g. if you gave your telephone number as 0044 (0) 1202 789654 the artificial email address would be 004401202789654@noemail.com
Responders will use the telephone number quoted separately to contact you. If you forget your password and didn't provide an email address you must use the telephone number to find it. It is safer to use an email address than a telephone number for contact purposes. You may of course use both if you wish.
Matching job seeker and job provider details for automatic alerts in child care
Matching is carried out using country, job type and location only. Whilst it would be possible to use additional matching criteria, such as live-in/live-out, CRB holding status, driver/non-driver, etc, we have not done this because we believe it could unnecessarily disadvantage all concerned. For example, a nanny without a driving licence or a CRB certificate might be in the process of obtaining one. A live-out position might be convertible to live-in, etc.
Once an email alert is received the recipient is able to make the final decision as to whether to proceed and make contact as he/she will have the full details of the applicant at her/his disposal.
Guide to payments for Bed and Breakfast section advertising
 Pricing structure for Bed and Breakfast advertising
All payments are made using PayPal.
Guide to payments for childrens entertainment sections advertising
Pricing structure for Entertainers
All payments are made using PayPal.
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