Borrow A Village is live! Get in touch if you need a babysitter
Finding a babysitter should be fairly simple. But if you don’t have grandparents around the corner, a trusted family friend you can call, or an established babysitter already in your contacts, it can be surprisingly difficult to know where to start. You might only need someone for a few hours so you can go out for dinner, attend a wedding or work event, get to an appointment, or simply have an occasional evening to yourself. It shouldn’t require hours of searching to find someone you feel comfortable leaving your children with.
That’s one of the reasons we created Borrow A Village. We’re now taking childcare requests from families across Sheffield and Chesterfield, and rather than operating as another childcare directory, we do the searching and matching for you.
Tell us what you need and we’ll look for the right person
When you send us a childcare request, you tell us when you need someone, where you’re based, how many children you have and their ages, and anything else that might be important to you. That might include needing someone who can drive, experience with babies or children with additional needs, or simply finding somebody who is particularly well suited to your family.
We then look at the childcare providers in our network, their experience, location and availability, and find a suitable match. It means you don’t have to spend an evening scrolling through profiles, sending messages and waiting to find out whether someone is actually available on the date you need them.
You’ll be given the details of the childcare provider we can offer, including their hourly rate, before you decide whether you’d like to confirm the booking. Sending us a request doesn’t commit you to anything.
Who are our childcare providers?
We’re building a local network of experienced babysitters and childcare professionals, including nannies, nursery practitioners, teaching assistants, teachers and people who have spent many years working with children and families.
We take the trust side of this seriously. Providers go through our onboarding and vetting process before we begin matching them with families, because we know that choosing somebody to look after your children is very different from choosing a cleaner, dog walker or taxi. Parents need to feel confident about the person walking through their front door. All providers have DBS checks, paediatric first aid certificates and safeguarding training. Many of them have additional training and certificates.
We also think the people providing that care deserve to be paid fairly. Our standard babysitting rate is £15 per hour, and Borrow A Village doesn’t take a percentage of the childcare provider’s hourly rate. What they earn for looking after your children goes to them.
No subscriptions and no endless searching
There’s no monthly or annual subscription for parents to use Borrow A Village. Instead, we charge a small booking fee when you use the service, which is currently £6 as a launch offer, plus the cost of the childcare itself.
We wanted the model to be simple: you don’t have to join another platform and pay for access in the hope that you might find someone. You tell us what childcare you need and we try to find it for you.
And it doesn’t have to be for a particularly big occasion. You might have a wedding in the diary, a Christmas party coming up, dinner booked with friends or a work event you need to attend. You might have an appointment that would be much easier without the children in tow. Or perhaps you and your partner would just really like to go out for dinner together for the first time in months.
Sometimes you don’t need regular childcare or a nanny every week. You just need someone you can trust next Friday night. That’s the gap Borrow A Village is here to fill.
Looking for a babysitter in Sheffield or Chesterfield?
We’re now accepting childcare requests across Sheffield and Chesterfield, with the Peak District coming next.
If there’s a date sitting in your diary and you’re already wondering who on earth is going to have the kids, send us the details. We’ll see if we can find your village.
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