Choosing Adequate Childcare with Bubble: The Babysitting App

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As parents we are always wanting and needing the best for our children and if you’re anything like me, you will spend most of your day worrying you’re not doing the right thing or not doing enough for them. When it comes to taking time out for yourself with or even without your other half, it can be really difficult to find adequate childcare for your little ones and can often lead to stressful decisions and not being able to relax when you actually get to leave the house!

We are lucky enough to have my mum who has Mia once a month for a weekend for us and has done since she was about 6 weeks old however now we have Lottie, it’s only been fairly recently that they have both started going to mums. With Lottie having colic and silent reflux, she stayed at home with us a lot longer than Mia did so at the time we were a bit stuck when a really important event came up last weekend that both Mario and I needed to attend. I was contacted by a babysitting app around 2 months before to see if we would be interested in using their services and at the time I was hesitant as Lottie was still so little however the event meant we needed some childcare and fast!

Bubble are a babysitting service app. Well established already in London, they are expanding further afield and have launched in my hometown of Nottingham. The idea of the app is that it matches qualified babysitters to your needs in a simple and effective way. With no joining fee and clearly marked pricing per babysitter, they are the go-to place for top quality babysitters.

Each babysitter that signs up to feature on the app has to meet their strict requirements and all applications are processed by Bubble staff so no one can slip through the loop as such. Although the babysitters are not DBS checked by Bubble themselves, details are checked on various systems and you can request that the chosen babysitter brings their documents with them to show you.

As a service user, you create a profile along with a photograph and then you can post a babysitting job using the date and time you need them, length of time you need them for, and even if you need them to be confident with new-borns or a foreign language. Once submitted, the system alerts any babysitters that fit your requirements and ask them to consider your job. You then get a list of all of the babysitters who are available and you can choose which one you would like to use (more about that in a moment).

We selected someone that lives really close by, is confident with colicy new-borns and who works with babies all day so we were sure she would know what she was doing! We then dropped her a message using the Bubble app to check if she could pop over and meet us all before the sit date, which she did. You are given the babysitters details once the sit is confirmed by both parties so you already have each other’s details ready for the evening.

At the time of the sit, the app starts a timer which runs until the end of your sit and you manually ‘End Sit’. If you do forget to do this, you can edit the time manually. A summary of your sit, the hours used and the total price is then calculated and once you have approved it, your sitter is paid using the app so you never have to worry about having the right cash ready to pay them at the end of the night, which is amazing! (The babysitter pays no fees at all so they get to keep all of the money they earn). There is a £3.50 booking fee per sit however you can sign up for the subscription which is £9.99 a month and you can arrange as many sits as you would like!

The great thing about the app is that you can favourite babysitters you have used and liked as well as review your babysitters so that other parents can see how many sits they have done and how good they are! You can also see who your friends and family have used so you can be sure that you are getting a good babysitter. We found the app really easy to use and have since used it twice more! It’s really great to know that whenever we need a babysitter, I can find one in a few clicks and the very fact that I can review them and ensure other parents can make informed decisions about their childcare is really reassuring.

One thing I would like to see on the app is the ability to post a regular job. So if we were looking for someone to come and watch Lottie for a couple of hours, 3 times a week while I work, there is currently no option to do this on the app. I think this would be a really useful addition. Also there is security on our side as parents hiring babysitters however there is little security in place for the babysitters as parents are not checked by Bubble before we have a live profile on the app, potentially meaning babysitters could be sent to houses that are not what they say they are.

I have no issue using Bubble in the future and have no doubt that we will continue to use it for the foreseeable. It has ensured we can hire a babysitter for the girls whenever we need one and be safe in the knowledge that they are going to be able to do the job!