We are a family of five living in Wimbledon, South West London, a 10 minute walk from the station. Wimbledon has a number of lovely parks (including one right next to our house) and also a shopping centre with a good range of shops, a cinema, gym, restaurants, coffee shops/bars and fantastic links to central London. Of course there is also the world famous Tennis tournament each summer.
I work in central London 5 days a week and my wife works locally in Wimbledon 3-4 days a week.
We have three lovely daughters, aged 8, 5 and.
1. The eldest is in Year 4 – her school is in Wimbledon. She has a number of after school activities so pick up times vary. She absolutely loves gymnastics and dancing.
Our 5 year old has special needs. She is mainly non-verbal but communicates via Makaton signing combined with a few words. She is an extremely happy and sociable little girl and is very rewarding to look after. She has a brilliant sense of humour and generally charms everyone she meets! She attends a special needs school in Surrey and is collected and dropped off by a taxi every day.
We are looking for someone who is fun, energetic, mature and organised and someone who will love our children and encourage them to develop. You should have prior experience in sole charge of young children. Any special needs experience would be bonus but not essential. We require someone who has fluent spoken and written English as the kids will need help with their homework. We would really like someone who is confident and outgoing and has been away from home before and preferably has friends in London.
We have a 5 bedroom house with a garden where you will have your own room with TV and full use of the internet. You will also have a bathroom which is shared with the children but not us.
Responsibilities:-
Approximately 50-55 hours per week, plus 2 nights of babysitting each week (only one of those will be a Friday or Saturday although not every Friday or Saturday). The hours would look like this:
Monday – 7am to 7pm
Tuesday – 7am to 7pm
Wednesday – 7am to 11 am and 3pm to 7pm
Thursday – 7am to 7pm
Friday – 7am to 11 am and 3pm to 7pm
My wife works in the office Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays so there is a degree of flexibility around the hours worked on Wednesdays and Fridays.
We would expect you to be responsible for getting the children up (though the oldest will dress herself), breakfasted and off to school. My wife is normally there to help out in the morning. The job will be predominantly centred around looking after our 1 year-old, taking her out to classes each locally and stimulating her with lots of fun activities whilst the two older girls are at school. In addition, you will cover the busy time after school, helping with homework, preparing tea and getting the girls bathed and ready for bed. My wife is normally home from work at 6pm and would help put the children to bed unless she is out for the evening.
We would also want you to do the children’s laundry, change their sheets and cook for them, keep the house tidy (tidying up playroom, children’s bedrooms, emptying the dishwasher etc). However, we do have a cleaner and would not expect you to clean or iron.
Other than the occasional babysitting, we don’t expect you to work at all during the weekend. There might be the odd weekend when we would like to go away for a night or two however this is a rare event!
In your spare time you can do as you please. We are a relaxed and happy family. You are welcome to babysit for other families locally if we don’t need you on a particular night.
The money will depend upon your experience and can be discussed.
Obviously we'd be very happy for you to speak to our previous nannies to see if we are nice people!
When applying please include references and you will need to have a clean DBS check.