‘You can start next week,’ I told my enthusiastic new nanny. Relieved, I had finally found ‘the one’.
Finding a suitable childminder in West London is no mean feat, despite being the mecca for childcare. Having one is a luxury that local mothers clamour to secure from day dot.
The perfect one will frolic in the park, teach your offspring their ABCs well before government guidance and cook healthy meals that are so delicious you become envious of your children’s lunches.
But this coveted London nanny comes with a hefty price tag – many now start at a minimum of £25 an hour, and are in such demand that they can stipulate their own terms, including a ‘chef and housemaid on tap’.
Unlike many of the Kensington mothers who hire help so they can relax at Soho House, pop off to Pilates and shop in Knightsbridge, I was hiring one after the birth of my son, Felix, so that I could desperately cling onto my part-time job on a News desk.
One of my previous nannies, Sam*, seemed perfect, a local 22-year-old who was studying children’s psychology and came with glowing reviews.
Once she started, I occasionally had to call her to remind her that she’d finished for the day, but I assumed she was either so hard-working she’d forgot her working hours, or was just slow walking back from wherever she’d been for the day.
But then the oddities began to occur.
Annette Kellow (pictured with her son) said: ‘My new nanny Sam seemed perfect, a local 22-year-old who was studying children’s psychology and came with glowing reviews’
Sam would avoid answering her phone. Then, once my son was old enough to tell me about his day, I discovered she’d been pocketing the lunch and bus money I’d give her, instead making my youngster walking around hungry.
Soon, my son began to talk about a man called Max. I later discovered this was Sam’s husband. When I asked her if she was meeting her spouse during her working hours, she flat-out denied it. But still, she would come home hours late, even in the middle of winter.
One day, she stated she couldn’t do her following shift because of ‘tube strikes’. ‘But you only live up the road?’ I asked.
She then sheepishly admitted she never really resided in Notting Hill but actually lived near Essex.
Why would she make up such a lie? Friends tried to paper over the cracks, citing that maybe she just really needed the work. I found myself trying to rationalise the situation, but couldn’t shake the negative gut feeling.
One evening, my son arrived home freezing with a huge bruise covering his side. As my son has a rare bleeding disorder, Sam knew to be careful.
She said it had nothing to do with her, but Felix kept mentioning her husband. Eventually, I learned that Samantha had been spending the day in the park with her partner while my son ran around on his own, even after dark.
This revelation left chills down my spine, and I terminated her agreement immediately. She didn’t care a jot and simply asked: ‘You’re still going to pay me, aren’t you?’
The mother (pictured with her son) added: ‘Once she started, I occasionally had to call her to remind her that she’d finished for the day, but I assumed she was either so hard-working she’d forgot her working hours, or was just slow walking back from wherever she’d been for the day’
I’m now strictly a no-nanny mother and will never hire home help again. I’m so paranoid that I don’t even desire a cleaner, preferring to do all the household labour myself.
And just like me, other parents deciding similar too. Mothers from Manhattan are now taking a stance on naughty nannies. A parents’ Facebook group, Moms of the Upper East Side (MUES), has become all the rage with many of the 37,000 members spying on nannies in parks and uploading the irrefutable evidence.
But stateside parents aren’t the only ones in dire straits. UK mothers often underestimate just how much trust they are placing on a stranger, something Amanda Zinn, 38, learned the hard way.
Based between London and Ibiza, Amanda decided to hire a nanny who could travel with the family, and she considered the simplest solution was to go through an elite central London agency.
Yet, she found the potential candidates were interviewing her, not the other way round, and branded them ‘divas’ who queried whether she had a chef and housemaid on tap.
Eventually, she found a 19-year-old nanny who spent the summer in Ibiza with her family.
‘She took my two kids, aged 4 and 5, to the beach, which was great, but she turned up topless wearing a thong,’ Amanda recalled.
‘Friends enquired, “you’re not going to let her near your husband, are you?” But things became worse than that.
But then the oddities began to occur, claimed Annette (pictured)
‘At the end of our stay, she began sleeping with a yacht owner’s son and then ran off with our next-door neighbour, a Dutch billionaire. It was a disaster!’
Now, Amanda hires a housekeeper who helps with a bit of childcare on the side and shares that after so many disastrous experiences, including ‘bartender nanny,’ and ‘stripper nanny’, she’ll never hire one again.
For Kirsten Younger, a lawyer and owner of stationery company The Ink Pot, she decided to use a popular childcare site for her three young children.
After her newly acquired nanny couldn’t find her way to her Oxfordshire home, Kirsten googled her name and discovered a disturbing truth.
‘I found she had been struck off for fraud in her previous social worker role and was on her way to my house,’ she explained.
‘I told the childcare website to cancel her immediately, and they went into defensive mode, telling me that she was only struck off for fraud, not for working with children.’
She added: ‘It shows a complete lack of morality on their behalf and calls into question the searches these websites do. They’re sending people into homes with your belongings and children. I was shocked.’
Kirsten’s childcare was not all plain sailing even after this incident.
Her next nanny preferred to lounge on the sofa sluggishly munching her way through a large KFC bucket while barely moving an inch to help, and another younger childminder sent her friend secretly hoping no one would notice, all because she couldn’t be bothered to do the job.
‘Now my children are older, I don’t have to bother with nannies,’ Kirsten said, sounding relieved that those days are over.
So, it appears good-hearted, hard-working nannies are worryingly perhaps a find of the best.
Ria Culley from the National Nanny Association shared that there needs to be more due diligence for children’s future safety.
‘We are calling on the Government to take urgent action to introduce mandatory DBS checks for all nannies, maternity nurses and in-home childcare providers; minimum training and qualification standards across the sector; the establishment of a recognised national register for childcare professionals, and stronger safeguarding frameworks and enforcement mechanisms.’
For many, this is a policy that would make life so much easier. But for now, us mothers will just have to stick with naming and shaming on Facebook groups.
*Names have been changed
