Find a babysitter in Melbourne: where to look, and what to check first

Melbourne has no shortage of babysitters and no one place they all sit. This guide is the version of the search you would do on purpose: where sitters actually are, what Victoria asks of them and what it asks of you, and how to get from a name to someone you would leave the house for. It is written for casual evenings and the odd weekday; a regular ongoing role is nanny work, and that has its own section near the end.

Where Melbourne parents actually find babysitters

There are four routes and none of them does the checking for you. What changes is how much you already know about the person when their name arrives.

The strongest lead is a sitter another family has already used, because somebody you trust has run the trial you are about to run. Ask at kinder pick-up and at the childcare gate. Educators often sit on weekends or know who does, and a sitter who already knows your child's name is worth going out of your way for.

A suburb parents' group on Facebook is how a lot of casual babysitting in Melbourne gets arranged, and it works. Sitters post their availability, parents post their Saturday, and replies come within hours. What you get is a name and a phone number, with no checks and no history behind either.

A marketplace is the third route and this is one. Profiles carry the suburb, the ages a sitter has looked after, their rate where they have set one, and whether we have verified them. Babysitters in Melbourne lists them closest first, and so do the suburb pages: Footscray, Brunswick East, South Yarra, St Kilda. Messaging does not hand over your number.

An agency is the fourth. It sends someone from its own books, usually with a minimum booking and a fee on top of the hourly rate, and it has verified the sitter's Check because Victoria requires the card for agency-placed work. That is a fair trade in an emergency and an expensive way to fill a regular Saturday night.

How much a babysitter costs per hour in Melbourne

We do not publish a Melbourne rate band, because we do not have enough Melbourne bookings to stand one up, and a made-up range is worse than no range. What sitters here ask is written on their own profiles, so the honest answer is on the search page rather than in this paragraph.

What moves a rate is the same everywhere: how many children, how late it finishes, and how far the sitter is travelling at 11pm. The award floor, which is national and so applies here the same as in Sydney, is in babysitter rates in Melbourne.

Does a babysitter need a Working with Children Check in Victoria

If you find and book the sitter yourself, no. Victorian law names "babysitting or child minding services arranged by a commercial agency" as the kind of babysitting that needs a card, so a family's own arrangement sits outside it. Anyone under 18 is exempt, so a 16-year-old sitter will not have one.

Plenty of Melbourne sitters hold a card anyway, and preferring the ones who do is reasonable. Ask for their family name, the first eight characters of the number and their okay to run it, then put that into the free Service Victoria checker. It takes two minutes and tells you whether the card is current today. How to check a Victorian WWCC is the step by step, including what each result means.

What to put in the first message

Send the whole thing at once. Spreading questions across a day of replies wastes everyone's time, and the shape of one reply tells you more than five.

The questions worth asking, and what a good answer sounds like, are in questions to ask a babysitter. Two belong in the first message: which ages they have looked after most, and two families you can ring. Ring one rather than just collecting the names, and ask whether they would have the sitter back.

The first booking, and how to keep a list

Make the first one short and stay close. An hour or two while you are at a neighbour's tells you more than any reply, and it gives the sitter a low-stakes first go at your children. Ask them to arrive ten minutes early, and leave them two numbers that will be answered, allergies and doses in writing, the bedtime routine, and the street address for an ambulance.

Pay the agreed rate on the night, in full, however the evening went. Then do it again with somebody else. One babysitter is a plan that fails the first time they are sick, and three is the difference between a search and a text message. It is also the real answer to finding a last-minute babysitter in Melbourne: you found them a month ago.

Where to find a full-time nanny in Melbourne

A set of hours every week in your home is nanny work rather than babysitting, and Victoria treats that as needing the Working with Children Check, so ask for the card before you go further. Sitters here say which kind of work they want and many say both, so nannies in Melbourne is the same search filtered to the ones open to an ongoing role. What to agree before the first week, from hours and notice to tax and super, is in how to find and hire a nanny.

What we do, and what is yours

Sitters write their own profile, set their own rate, and families nearest to them see it first. Sitters who opt in are verified: we check a government photo ID against a selfie and we check their WWCC status with the issuing state. A profile without a badge says which of the two is outstanding, which is normal and not a warning. We never touch the money and sitters keep all of what you agree. The message, the call, the check and the short first booking are the parts nobody can do for you. What the badge covers, in full