Terms of use

1. Who we are, and what this service is

AusBabysitters (“we”, “us”) operates ausbabysitters.com and the AusBabysitters app, where families in Sydney and people offering babysitting or nannying work can find one another. In these terms the service means all of that, however you reach it. AusBabysitters is a registered business name of Matthew Lewandowski, ABN 61 893 315 209.

We are an introduction service and nothing more. Families, babysitters, and nannies arrange and pay for care directly between themselves. We are not an employer, an employment agency, a labour hire provider, a childcare service, a booking platform, or a payments platform. We do not select, supervise, direct, insure, or guarantee any person listed with us.

By using the service you agree to these terms. Creating an account requires ticking a box that says you accept them and our privacy policy; we record which version you accepted and when. If you do not agree, do not use it.

2. No employment, agency, or guarantee

Any arrangement for care is a contract between the family and the sitter alone. We are not a party to it. Nothing in the service creates an employment relationship, a partnership, a joint venture, or an agency relationship between us and any user, or between users because of us.

Sitters using the service are independent — they set their own rates, choose their own work, and are responsible for their own tax, insurance, and any registration their work requires. Families are responsible for satisfying themselves that the person they engage is suitable, and for meeting any obligation the law places on them as the person engaging that care.

3. What we verify, and what we do not

A verified badge means we confirmed two things on the date shown: a government photo identity document with a matching selfie, checked through Didit, our identity verification provider, and a Cleared Working With Children Check status confirmed with the register for the state that issued it — today New South Wales and Victoria.

A Working With Children Check here means whatever the issuing state calls it: a blue card in Queensland, an Ochre Card in the Northern Territory, a registration to work with vulnerable people in Tasmania and the ACT.

A badge is not a guarantee, a recommendation, an endorsement, or a statement about any person’s character, competence, or conduct. It reflects the day it was checked, not any day after. We do not verify references, first aid certificates, qualifications, or claimed experience — those are the sitter’s own statements. That includes any police check, certificate or qualification a sitter sends you as a file: we keep the file and show it to you, and we have not verified it. Read the name and the date yourself. A profile without a badge says which of the two checks we have done and which we have not — one can finish before the other, and a profile carrying neither is a profile we have not checked. Two things on a profile are not the sitter’s own words. We count how quickly they reply to families here and say so where the pattern is clear — that describes what has happened, not what will. And the age shown is the date of birth they gave us counted forward to today, not a separate claim. Whatever a profile shows, meet first, check references, and make your own decision.

A family can also choose to have their identity checked, and a verified sitter they have been talking to can ask them to. It is one document and one selfie, checked through Didit, and it says exactly that much: “ID checked” means a real ID and a live selfie passed, nothing about the family, their home, or the work. It is not a Working With Children Check and it is not a badge. It is optional, nothing in the service depends on having it or not having it, and a check that did not pass reads the same as one nobody started.

Full detail is on our verification page, which forms part of these terms.

4. Your account

• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account or to list as a sitter.
• Sign-in is a six-digit code sent to your email address, or your Google account on that same address. You can also sign in with Apple, on the website or in our iPhone app. Each address is one account: a code, Google and Apple on the same address all reach the same one. If you sign in with Apple and choose Hide My Email, Apple gives us a different address, and that is a different account. Keep access to that address secure; anyone with it can reach your account.
• One account per person. If signing in with Apple and Hide My Email has left you with a second one, email hello@ausbabysitters.com and we will remove one. Information you give us — including your name, suburb, rates, and availability — must be accurate and about you.
• If you are verified and your Working With Children Check is suspended, revoked, or barred, or the equivalent in the state that issued your check, or you become subject to any order that restricts you from child-related work, you must stop accepting work through the service and tell us at hello@ausbabysitters.com without delay.
• You may delete your account at any time; it takes effect immediately. We may close or suspend an account under clause 8.

The service is for families arranging care for their own children, and for people offering care they will give themselves. Agencies, recruiters, labour hire providers and other businesses may not hold an account, post an ad, or contact anyone here — on their own behalf or for a client. We remove those accounts and bar the people behind them under clause 8.

5. Arranging care

Everything about a booking is between you and the other person: the rate, the hours, what the job involves, cancellation, and what happens if plans change. We recommend agreeing all of it in writing before the first booking, meeting in person first, and checking references.

We do not check whether a booking took place, whether anyone turned up, or whether anyone was paid. We have no ability to enforce any arrangement made through the service, and you deal with each other at your own risk.

6. Payments

We do not process, hold, escrow, or take a commission on payments between families and sitters. Sitters keep 100% of what they agree with a family. Any dispute about money is between the two of you.

Use of the service is currently free for everyone. We sell nothing through an app store, so there is nothing there to buy and nothing to refund. We may charge families a fee in future. If we do, the price and terms will be published on our pricing page before they take effect, and you will only ever be charged after agreeing to the charge.

7. Content and conduct

You must not use the service to:

• impersonate anyone, list a profile that is not about you, or provide false or borrowed verification details;
• post another person’s personal information, including children’s names, photographs, or home addresses, without their consent;
• harass, threaten, abuse, or discriminate against anyone, or send unsolicited advertising;
• advertise services other than care work, or recruit users to another platform;
• use the service as, or for, an agency, recruiter or business, including posting a role for a client or gathering applicants for anything other than care for your own children;
• scrape, bulk-download, or republish profile data, or attempt to circumvent access controls;
• do anything unlawful, or anything that puts a child at risk.

You keep ownership of what you write. By posting it you give us a non-exclusive licence to display and distribute it as part of operating the service, including on public profile, suburb and job pages that search engines can index, and in posts on our own social media accounts that show only what your public profile already shows.

An open job ad is public and carries your first name, last initial and photo. You can close it at any time.

A sitter can send a family their resume, a police check, a first-aid certificate, a qualification or their references from inside a conversation. The family can open, download and keep a file; taking it off your profile stops the link working, but not a copy somebody already saved. Only add a document that is yours. A file that belongs to somebody else, or an identity document of any kind, is refused and deleted. References arrive as a list of names and contact details, which the family can write down just as easily, so removing them — or your last one — takes the list out of the app and no further. Only list somebody as a referee if they have agreed to be contacted about your work.

Reviews must describe your own genuine experience with someone you actually contacted through the service. We do not remove reviews for being unflattering. We do remove reviews that are false, abusive, or written in exchange for anything.

8. Reports, suspension, and removal

Ads, profiles, photos, resumes, documents, references, reviews, and messages are checked before they are published or delivered. We can decline anything that breaches section 7; you are told the reason, and repeated refusals can suspend an account under this clause. A refused resume, document or reference is simply deleted. A conversation is also read automatically to tell whether it led to a sit and so whether to invite each of you to review the other.

Anyone can report a profile or a message, with or without an account. A review can be reported only by the person it is about. We read every report. Reports raising a safety concern go to the top of the queue and we aim to respond within 24 hours; we will unpublish a profile while we look into a serious report.

We may suspend or remove any account or content, at any time, if we reasonably believe these terms have been breached or that a person may be at risk. Where a verified sitter’s Working With Children Check status changes to barred, their profile comes down the same day we learn of it and we contact families who have recently been in contact with them. In New South Wales the Children’s Guardian tells us. In other states nothing tells us after the check: we learn of a bar only if the sitter or a family tells us, and the badge otherwise stands until the check’s expiry date, when it comes down.

If we remove your account we email you which of these terms we believe you broke.

Reports are evidence. When a conversation is reported we keep a copy of its recent messages with the report, and reports survive the deletion of the account they concern — see the privacy policy for how long.

9. Australian Consumer Law

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any right, guarantee, or remedy you have under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

To the extent we are permitted to do so, our liability for a failure to comply with a consumer guarantee is limited to resupplying the service or paying the cost of having it resupplied.

10. Limitation of liability

Subject to clause 9, and to the fullest extent permitted by law:

• the service is provided as is, and we do not warrant that any listing is accurate, that anyone is suitable, or that you will find or be found by anyone;
• we are not liable for the acts or omissions of any user, including anything that happens before, during, or after care is provided;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, opportunity, or data;
• where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability to you is limited to the greater of the amount you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or one hundred Australian dollars.

You indemnify us against claims brought by a third party arising from your breach of these terms, your content, or any care arrangement you enter into, except to the extent we caused the loss.

11. Availability and changes to the service

The service is free to use, and we run it accordingly: we do not promise uninterrupted availability, and we may change, suspend, or shut down features — or the service — after reasonable notice where practicable. Your data rights on closure are in the privacy policy.

12. Intellectual property

The service, its design, and its written content are ours or our licensors’. You may link to any public page. You may not copy our content or data for a competing service.

13. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. If a change is material we will email account holders before it takes effect and update the date at the top of this page. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept the updated terms; if you do not agree, delete your account before then. Changes that are not material — fixing a typo, clarifying a sentence — just update this page and its date.

14. General

These terms and the pages they incorporate are the whole agreement between you and us about the service. If part of them turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to a corporate entity established to run this service; your rights are unchanged if we do. You may not transfer yours — an account is personal.

15. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of New South Wales, Australia, and you and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of that state.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms go to hello@ausbabysitters.com. If a child is at immediate risk, call 000.