Education Help

Families should consider the ages of their children when deciding upon the educational requirements they will want the nanny to have. For example, an infant will need someone with excellent nurturing skills, while a school age child may need more structure and routine, such as help with homework.

Many high schools are now offering classes in the childcare field, which allow the students who successfully complete this course work to meet specific state requirements for day care workers. Maryland, for example, requires a 90-hour certification in Early Childhood Education, a requirement that the high schools enable their graduates to meet, if the appropriate courses are taken. Additionally, many local community colleges and universities offer courses in early childhood education-related work. Some objective qualifications to use in your search may be: high school diploma, child development course work, certification from nanny training program, education degree from an accredited college.

4nannies.com has teamed with LifeWork Strategies, the developer of the Nanny Essentials Training Program, to bring nannies a FREE nanny skills assessment tool, located at http://www.4nannytraining.com. Families may want to encourage candidates to take this assessment and provide the family with their test key (an identification of the test taken by the nanny, her responses, and how she scored). This is an assessment tool only, it does not substitute for classroom and practical training.

Nanny Training Programs

At the present time, there are no national standards within the United States for nannies or nanny programs and no standard credentialing system for certifying that a nanny possesses any certain skill or qualifications. The International Nanny Association has established a credentialing process; however, the actual number of nannies who have taken the credentialing exam is quite small. Similarly, the National Association for Nanny Care is developing a tiered nanny credentialing process. Currently, the options available to families who want to hire an individual who has received "nanny training" are to contact the particular school attended by the nanny candidate and question each as to:

1. the length of their program
2. the content of the program
3. how long the program has been available
4. what if any accreditation the school has
5. what are qualifications of the instructors
6. what percentage of the training involves actual working with children.