How to hire a babysitter during the pandemic

After months of living in a pandemic, every parent is screaming for a break. Child-care centers are open, but not everyone feels comfortable yet sending their kids into an environment with a bunch of other little ones. And then there are those evenings where you just need to get out of the house. So many are wondering: Is it safe to hire a babysitter?

“Everything during the pandemic is a bit of a risk-versus-benefit-assessment situation — for some, a babysitter is more of a necessity than an option,” says Sohni Dean, an attending physician in the department of pediatrics at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. “If you need child care, then you need to find a way to make that as safe of a decision as possible.”

How can you minimize your risk during the pandemic? Here’s what to consider.

Get to know potential candidates virtually, ideally through a video platform like Zoom that lets you interact face-to-face. Your initial interview should include questions not only about their experience but also about their exposure to other people. It’s well known by now that people can spread the virus even if they don’t have symptoms. And the more people who your babysitter sees, the higher their risk of being exposed to the coronavirus, and then infecting your household.

“Start general: ‘How often do you come into contact with people outside of your household? Have you traveled outside of the city to a known hot spot? Does anyone in your household have any symptoms?’” says Dean.

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Gain a sense of what their life looks like without prying so much that you can’t build trust. You don’t need their partner’s name and number, for example, but you may want to ask if their partner is a frontline worker. If an answer sounds an alarm, ask if they’ll share more specifics.

“Two weeks is a good rule of thumb — find out where they’ve been across the past two weeks,” says Kate Cronan, a pediatrician and emergency medicine doctor at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. Coronavirus symptoms may appear two to 14 days after exposure to the virus.

This is a repeated conversation you’ll need to have if hiring a babysitter for more than one night. And of course, be up-front about your own lifestyle, too. If your babysitter is living with or caring for anyone who’s high risk, and you’re going to an in-person job everyday, there may be a better fit.

When searching for a sitter, start with people you already know, like a relative or someone from your church, says Cronan. This way you start off with a baseline level of trust and familiarity. And this may boost your confidence that they’ll follow through with extra safety measures.

If starting from scratch, look for candidates who live near you, whether through a service like Care.com or a neighborhood messaging forum, like Nextdoor. Staying local will negate the need for public transportation.

“A lot of parents are requesting no public transportation right now, so we’re trying even harder than usual to send people who are closer to where parents live,” says Rachel Lee-Nigsch, co-owner of Sitter Select, a service that matches babysitters with parents in Philadelphia.

If taking SEPTA is necessary, make sure the sitter agrees to wearing a mask over their nose and mouth and uses hand sanitizer after they leave the train or bus.

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Decide together about wearing masks. Ideally, both the babysitter and the child would wear one, says Dean.

“If you’re talking about young children, that may be scary for them and limit their ability to see emotional cues from this new person, so again, it’s a risk assessment that needs to be individualized to the family,” says Dean. “If the family and babysitter are comfortable not wearing masks, it needs to be an up-front conversation.”

Dean points out that children under 2 years old should never wear a mask, and neither should kids of any age when they’re sleeping.

Have a conversation about other safety measures, too. Is it OK to take the kids to the park? What hand-washing routines is your family already following? When is it OK for the mask to come off?

"Be sure to remind the babysitter not to share his or her glass, cup, plate, and utensils with the children,” says Cronan.

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In an ideal world, you’d use the same babysitter every week, and they would watch only your kids. But for many, this isn’t feasible.

Here’s the challenge: The more families your babysitter interacts with, the more pathways for the coronavirus to travel to your own family.

To assess risk, ask how many other kids your sitter watches, if they’re going to school in-person, and if any of their parents are essential workers. Don’t be afraid to ask for the other parents’ contact information.

“Have a group discussion to see if they’re following similar protocols,” says Dean.

If your kid is going to school in-person, consider coordinating with other parents. You may be able to share a babysitter with only, or primarily, families who are already part of your pandemic bubble.

Who you hire will come down to your comfort level.

“If you had to make a risk stratification, parents who work at home and have the babysitter come to their home is the lowest risk,” says Dean.

Taking your child to the babysitter’s home is a little riskier since you have less control over the environment. And teaming up with a neighbor’s family to share a babysitter is a bit riskier than that, since it involves more people.

“A day-care is potentially the most risky, but it might be better than a babysitter looking after multiple people at their house because there’s much clearer guidance for day-cares,” says Dean.

Child-care centers are urged to closely follow safety guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.