Hiring a Nanny Transcripts August, 1997 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. GUESTS: ALAN FRIEDMAN, ATTORNEY, OWNER OF A NANNY AGENCY The following are excerpts from the viewer call-in portion of the program. Childcare Placement Agencies Differences Between Nannies and Au Pairs Finding Childcare with Limited Financial Resources Screening Prospective Nannies Hiring a Babysitter Using Surveillance Cameras Tips for Finding the Right Nanny MS. GRASSO: Welcome back to our second hour of Legal Cafe. I'm June Grasso. Though it would be lovely if life were like the movies and Mary Poppins would literally drop in on us to take perfect care of our children, it doesn't happen that way, as any parent can tell you. There are a lot of things to worry about when hiring a nanny or a babysitter, and a lot of legal issues to consider, as well. The good news is we'll have plenty of information for you and an expert here to answer your questions on this topic. MS. GRASSO: I'm now joined by Alan Friedman to take us through the process. Alan and his wife are the co-owners of a licensed in-home child care placement agency, and Alan is a graduate of New York University School of Law. Welcome, Alan. MR. FRIEDMAN: Thank you. CHILDCARE PLACEMENT AGENCIES MS. GRASSO: Alan, let's talk about -- let's talk about the nanny first, the live-in caretaker for your children and finding one. What's the best way to find one? A licensed agency is one way. Are there other ways? MR. FRIEDMAN: There are lots of ways. Unfortunately, some of the ways could lead to problems. Some ways have led to disasters in certain cases. I think the most important thing is to look for an agency that's reliable, that is an agency that you can depend upon if you're using an agency. MS. GRASSO: So now, if you don't have friends who have used an agency, how do you find one that's reliable? A lot of states license, a lot of states don't. Can you check with your Better Business Bureau? How can you check up on the agency before you even get started with checking up on the credentials of the nanny? MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, I think -- I think there are a number of organizations -- for instance, the International Nanny Association, of which I happen to be a member, is an organization that consists of over 800 placement agencies, nannies, educators around the United States, and that's an organization that could certainly advise any parents about agencies located where they are. These are agencies that are members of the International Nanny Association. The International Nanny Association has a lot of recommended practices for agencies and parents. It's a good way to go. MS. GRASSO: And we're going to have some numbers for our viewers later on that they'll be able to go to. Let's talk about -- you sign up with the agency or you put an ad in the newspaper and the nanny comes to you for an interview. What are the key issues you should settle with this? How do you really decide if this is the right person for you? MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, I think the first thing to do is to set up some parameters about what you're looking for, the kind of person that you want to work with your children, the kind of duties and obligations that she's going to have, how many hours she's going to work for you, and then you need to interview this person very carefully. You have to feel that not only is this person capable on paper, but she's somebody that you feel comfortable with. MS. GRASSO: Do you think -- you know, I initially, when my daughter was young, I had thought about a nanny, and I had this free-form interview going, which I think now is a very bad idea. I eventually decided not to go with a nanny, but do you think you should have things written down and really check up and really be specific or that puts the person off? MR. FRIEDMAN: No, I think you should. I think it's a good way to start. I think that the interview process should be more than one interview, and, in fact, if you find somebody that you like who fits the specifications, that person should come back and even work for you on a trial basis for one or two days. MS. GRASSO: And now checking credentials. If you do go to a licensed agency, they're supposed to check the credentials. Should you check them anyway, have them checked? MR. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. I think if you're working with a legitimate, reliable agency, that agency's going to do a few things for you. Not only are they going to meet the nanny and determine for themselves that she's qualified, they're going to reference check her. A very important part of the whole process is talking to people that the nanny has worked for before, determining that, number one, those references are legitimate; number two, that she did good work for those people; and, number three, that the environment in which she worked is similar to yours. MS. GRASSO: All right, and there are a lot of other issues. We're going to talk about babysitters, au pairs, and the legal obligations that come with hiring a nannies and babysitters. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A NANNY AND AN AU PAIR MS. GRASSO: Welcome back to Legal Cafe. I'm June Grasso. We're talking about babysitters, nannies, and au pairs this hour, and the legal steps you can take to protect yourself and your children when looking for child care. It turns out the rules and responsibilities change with the type of caregiver. A nanny is a child care professional who must be a U.S. citizen or a legal immigrant and requires all of the Social Security and tax payments as any other worker. A nanny can either live in your home or travel there each day. An agency will usually check a nanny's references. By contrast, an au pair is a foreign citizen who's much like an exchange student. Because of this, an au pair must live in your home for a maximum of 13 months, and while you don't have to pay Social Security taxes for an au pair, it's much more difficult to check references. Let's talk a little bit about -- before we go to the phones -- about the differences between the nanny and the au pair. The nanny is an employee, and you've got to do all the kind of things. You need an employment identification number, you've got to file all the papers, all the tax consequences, or it's Nannygate. MR. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. That's right. MS. GRASSO: Is it really a burdensome process? MR. FRIEDMAN: It's a burdensome process, but it's something that can be handled, and a lot of parents do it. There are actually organizations that have grown up since Zoe Baird who will do the work for you. There are accounting firms that are able to set you up with all the paperwork, and they'll even go so far as to write the checks to the nannies. MS. GRASSO: Now, the au pair is really a completely different situation, because it's a younger person between 18 and 25, who's only in your house for about 13 months. You don't get to have that bond with the child and the au pair. MR. FRIEDMAN: Not only that, you haven't met and interviewed the nanny or the au pair before you've seen her. She's someone you may have spoken to over the phone in Europe. She may come over here off the plane and be somebody who's totally different than what you expected, and you're basically stuck with her. I think au pair agencies will work out arrangements for replacements, you know, on occasions, but all in all, it's not somebody that you've had the intimacy with or the intimate knowledge of that you will get with a nanny that you're interviewing here. MS. GRASSO: The advantage of cost is the -- of course, is the cost -- MR. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. MS. GRASSO: -- which is about a hundred -- around $125 a week and it's also an insurance, and other than that, it's room and board, so the differences in cost are really where I think -- MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, the difference is definitely the cost, but also in what the nanny -- the difference is in what the nanny and the au pair do for you. The au pair is limited in the amount of hours she can work a week. The nanny isn't, and a lot of nannies work very long hours. The au pair is supposed to be here on a cultural/educational exchange program. The nanny isn't. The nanny's here to be your employee. I think a lot of people take advantage of the au pair system, and in that way think they're getting a less expensive nanny -- and that's not what it's supposed to be. MS. GRASSO: Au pairs can't work more than 45 hours a week or 10 hours a day, so it's a big difference. FINDING CHILDCARE WITH LIMITED FINANCIAL RESOURCES Let's go to the phones right now. Debbie from Wisconsin. Welcome to Legal Cafe, Debbie. Q Thanks. MS. GRASSO: Are you having a problem or are you looking for a nanny or a babysitter? Q Well, I was, and the problem that I have here in Wisconsin is since the work fare or -- they're trying to get welfare reform and all these mothers need sitters kind of like at the last minute. What can a person do with limited resources to try and find a good sitter? Two or three major things that we can look for? I'm also worried about -- there aren't enough sitters and day cares in this area to help all parents that work different shifts, different hours, you know, like the 11:00 to 7:00, you know, in the morning, and what are people that are -- that do have limited resources, that can't afford a nanny or someone to come into their home or whatever, how that's going to affect everybody in the United States, not just, you know, people that are trying to get off AFDC or whatever and get -- MS. GRASSO: Debbie, have you tried any of the drop-in day care situations? Q Oh, yes, and there's about a six-month waiting list, and when you have to be off AFDC or whatever and then get a sitter, you don't have time -- I mean, you have to have a sitter right then and there, and you don't have six months to wait for a day care to open up or a certified babysitter. The state will help you pay for a certified babysitter, but there are only a handful of people that are willing to have the government come in and look up their background and do home drop-in checks all the time. There's enough people that have children that aren't going to be subsidized with the babysitting money that, you know, they don't need to go through all that bother and stuff, and where are all these parents going to be or single women going to be when there isn't any day care available and, you know, I think that that's -- MS. GRASSO: It's a -- listen, finding a babysitter in the best of situations when you have a lot of money is tough, so finding a babysitter when you -- when there's a limited amount of time and resources involved must be incredible. Do you have any suggestions? MR. FRIEDMAN: It's funny. I mean, it's hard for us to come up with answers. Congress hasn't supplied any answers to these questions. I don't know what a certified babysitter is. I don't know that there are such things. I would only suggest the possibility for local advertising, but you need to be extremely careful about having somebody come into your home if you haven't been able to reference check them, which means speak with people that they've worked for before -- extremely important -- and you need to do some sort of background investigation, criminal check. You never know who's coming into your home. MS. GRASSO: Debbie, how about a few mothers in the same situation kind of banding together and working out hours where you can watch each other's children without pay -- that kind of a commune kind of effect? Q Well, that would be a good idea if everybody, you know, everybody in my neighborhood or whatever worked different shifts or whatever, but I suppose that that could work, and that might be something to look at. MS. GRASSO: Also hiring, perhaps, if you have two or three mothers who have, you know, children around the same ages who are hiring a babysitter together as a group so you can put enough money together to hire a babysitter and be sure to do what Alan says, which is check out the references and do a background check on that babysitter and, you know, work together as a group, because I think, you know, you're going to run into the situation that babysitters are scarce, and particularly during the daytime, the hours when you're looking for them, and they are costly. There's no way to get around that. That's the problem with child care in our country today. So perhaps if you group together and work out -- you can work out a solution better that way and, you know, pool your resources. So give that a try. Alan, do you have any other suggestions? It's very tough. MR. FRIEDMAN: It's very tough, but I can't emphasize enough not panicking and not doing something that's going to cause you a terrible problem later on. There are plenty of people out there who will take advantage of this kind of a situation, and it's really important that you do a proper background investigation and make sure that these people that you're hiring are not people with backgrounds, abusive backgrounds or criminal backgrounds. MS. GRASSO: All right. Thanks so much, Debbie. Good luck. Remember, there's strength in numbers. SCREENING PROSPECTIVE NANNIES MS. GRASSO: Screening. You want to know how to screen these people to make sure that you're having someone in your home who's reliable, trustworthy, and hasn't been involved in any problems before. And, you know, we were talking about this a little bit before off camera, because if you don't -- a licensed agency will do this for you. MR. FRIEDMAN: That's what they're doing. MS. GRASSO: And you say they're hiring detectives, actually you're hiring detectives to do background checks. What about the person who obviously is looking for a situation where they don't have to pay as much money? Should they hire a detective, should they -- what kind of screening can they do? MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, the first -- I think the first thing to do when you sit down with the potential candidates and interview them is to get a chronological history of what they've been doing over the last five, 10, 15 years. Find out if they've been working for other families and who those families are, where they're located, and their telephone numbers. If there are gaps where they've been doing something else, not babysitting, find out what they have been doing and maybe get the numbers of the stores where they've been working or the bank where they've been working. You need to call enough people in this person's background so that you will feel comfortable that you're getting a solid, honest person who's going to give you the comfort so that when you go to work, you'll feel safe. MS. GRASSO: What about having someone, for example, do criminal record checks, Social Security checks, credit checks, all those kind of things, or hiring a detective to do some of this? MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, there are detective agencies that will do that for you. It's expensive -- MS. GRASSO: but, I mean, it sounds like it's something that if this person's going to be in your home, taking care of your child for -- MS. GRASSO: -- who knows how many years -- MR. FRIEDMAN: It's certainly worthwhile to do it, to investigate the different costs. I would call more than one detective agency, find out what they would charge you to do a background investigation, including a criminal check on these people. It can also include driver -- driver record check, it could include a credit check, it could include educational verifications, like that. MS. GRASSO: It's a difficult area, but you have to be very careful -- as every parent knows. MS. GRASSO: Let's go back to the phones, where Stacy from Wyoming is standing by. Stacy, I believe you're the first caller from Wyoming on the show, so welcome to Legal Cafe. Q My question is is that, you know you were talking about hiring a private investigator -- And, I'm -- you know, in Wyoming, I live in a little town, and we don't have very many resources, and I was just wondering how -- how do you afford that, you know? The state, when you go through them to have your babysitting paid and everything, they do a background check -- they just do to make sure that they're not felons, that's all they check out. MS. GRASSO: They do a criminal background check, okay. Q Yeah, but that doesn't tell you what kind of babysitter they are, or anything -- MS. GRASSO: No. Well, I think what you have to do, too, is you've got to get -- as Alan was saying, you've got to get references, as many references as you can. You've got to get them to do a chronological list of what their employment has been so you can check yourself, you can call each of those references and check with them to make sure that the kind of care they've been giving to other children and the kind of work that they've done in other jobs, so if the state does the check for you about their criminal background, then it's up to you to really check out all the references and also to check out to make sure that you don't see any gaps in your employment and find out what those gaps are. MR. FRIEDMAN: You might want to take a ride to their house and meet their husband or their family and see where they live. You might want to talk to clergymen who know them, although it's hard to find clergymen who'll say anything negative about -- MS. GRASSO: That's true. MR. FRIEDMAN: -- a parishioner, but still, as much as you can do to learn about who this person is and what she's been doing will give you some comfort and security. MS. GRASSO: And, Stacy, as Alan was saying before, when you have an interview, really go into depth with the person and, you know, bring them back for one or two interviews. You have to be comfortable with that person, as well as feeling confident that they can watch your child and really be in your position when you're out of the household. It's really a tough -- I think one of the toughest things to do is to hire someone to watch your child. MR. FRIEDMAN: It is, and it requires a lot of homework. You just can't do it lightly like that movie -- MS. GRASSO: The Hand That Rocks the Cradle -- MR. FRIEDMAN: They hired somebody off the street and they really got what they deserved because they didn't -- weren't careful. HIRING A BABYSITTER MS. GRASSO: You know, one thing about -- we haven't talked that much about babysitters, as far as the legal obligations for babysitters, and I was surprised when I read the information that our crack researchers had done for us, that if you have a babysitter that you're paying more than a thousand dollars a year, that babysitter is supposed to be treated as an employee, and you're really subject to all the rules and regulations of an employer. MR. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. You have withholding tax to consider, you have Social Security tax to consider. Depending upon the state you're in, you have unemployment insurance and workers' compensation. It could cost anywhere from 10 to 15 percent over and above the salary that you pay the nanny just to cover the taxes. MS. GRASSO: And a thousand dollars -- at the rates of babysitters nowadays, a thousand dollars a couple of weekends a month doesn't go very far. MR. FRIEDMAN: That's right. MS. GRASSO: That's why I'm lucky I have the grandma babysitter that I don't have to pay anything. MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, my son is 14 and he does some babysitting, and he hasn't hit a thousand dollars yet, so he's pretty good for parents. MS. GRASSO: Well, the exception, too, is if the person is under 18 years of age or is a member of your family, then that rule doesn't apply, so that's another exception to look out for. USING SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS MS. GRASSO: Alan, you hear a lot about these undercover cameras that people can put in their house, because there were all these horrible stories at one point about things going on in households and in day care centers with child care providers hitting or being physically abusive toward children. What's the story, or what's the availability of putting these undercover cameras in your home? MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, I think first we should start off by saying that for every instance of child abuse or a nanny doing something that she wasn't supposed to be doing, there are thousands of nannies who do great work in this country and spend many hours doing it. Just like we hear about an airplane crash, you know, we don't think about the many hours of safe air travel. MS. GRASSO: Right, but you're worried about it. I mean, most parents -- MR. FRIEDMAN: It is a concern, especially when the media features these horrible pictures of somebody doing something wrong. Our position on it is is that surveillance is part -- is going to be or is part of the process, at this point. I think a lot of parents do it. There are a lot of services that are offering it. We think it should be a developmental educational tool. We think that nannies before they're hired should know that this particular family intends to do it. They don't necessarily have to know when it's going to happen, but they should know and have the option of not working for that family, if they don't think it's correct. I think that will have a good effect on the industry. I think it will drive out bad nannies. I think -- I think that it should not be done illegally, which means that it should only be done in public areas, should not be done in the nanny's bedroom, should not be done in bathrooms, and it should not, certainly, be done where there is sound recording, because then it will violate wiretapping laws. MS. GRASSO: Now, what about the cost of this. Is it very expensive? MR. FRIEDMAN: I'm not sure. The last figures I heard were that you could rent an outfit, they will have it installed, and I think you can have it for two or three days or maybe a week, and it was somewhere in the two (hundred dollar) or $300 range. MS. GRASSO: All right. Not as expensive as I thought it would be. TIPS FOR FINDING THE RIGHT NANNY MS. GRASSO: We're almost out of time for this hour, and before we wrap things up, I want to take a minute to go over some of the legal points for hiring a nanny, a babysitter, or an au pair, and we're going to call this Alan Friedman's House Blend for Tender Loving Care. First, use a reputable licensed agency to find your nanny. You should also check all paperwork to document the caregiver's authority to work in the United States. You might also conduct a background investigation of your potential nanny or babysitter, but don't forget about the cost. Well, Alan, we just have moments left, so give us your best tip for the person out there trying to find a nanny. MR. FRIEDMAN: Be careful. Nannies are taking care of your most treasured possessions, and don't take anything for granted. If you're hiring an agency, be careful. Go to the right agency, call the Better Business Bureau, call the licensee's agencies. Make sure that you're going to a legitimate reputable agency, and if you don't use an agency, even be more careful, because there are people out there who might want to take advantage of you. MS. GRASSO: All right. Alan Friedman, thanks so much for coming in -- MR. FRIEDMAN: It's been great. MS. GRASSO: -- to Legal Cafe this morning. We appreciate your input.