School's Out For Summer - Sittercity Asks Who's Watching Your Children?

CHICAGO, May 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The end of the school year is a cause for celebration for millions of children around the nation. However, for their parents, it poses a serious question: Who is going to watch over my children for the next three months? Sittercity.com, the nation's most trusted online source for nannies and babysitters, offers the following tips to find the perfect summer sitter:

Tip One: Start Early – Post your babysitting job on Sittercity.com a month before school lets out. This will allow adequate time to identify and screen new candidates, check references and review background checks. Remember that most of the parents in your children's school will also be looking for summer sitters, so starting early gives you a leg up on the competition.

• Parents start looking for summer sitters as early as January.
• The majority of parents post a summer sitter job the first week of May.

Tip Two: Keep the Kids Learning – Summer vacation can be fun, but you can also use this time to continue to teach your children. At Sittercity, approximately a quarter of the caregivers are teachers or have an educational background and this increases to almost one third in the summer months.  

Tip Three: Write Down the Details – Write down all the events your children are signed up for this summer: camp, summer school, arts and crafts classes, play dates, etc., so your sitter has all the details. If your kids would like to have friends over or want to go to a friend's house, make sure to write down who they can visit, their contact information, addresses and details, so your sitter has them at hand.

With Sittercity.com, parents have full access to hundreds — even thousands — of experienced caregivers in every city across the nation, all with detailed profiles that feature their experience, background checks, references, reviews and photos. Parents can either search for the perfect sitter using a wide range of caregiver criteria or post a job so the most qualified caregivers come directly to them.

In addition to providing parents with access to America's best caregivers, Sittercity.com also makes it easy for parents to pick out that perfect sitter. From its four-step screening process (which includes reading caregiver reviews, conducting interviews, checking references and reviewing background checks) to its interactive Babysitter Rate Calculator (www.sittercity.com/rates), Sittercity.com takes all the guesswork out of hiring a sitter. While agencies charge up to $2,500 to search for caregivers, Sittercity.com provides parents with all of these tools as well as unlimited access to caregivers in their area for as low as $12/month.

About Sittercity®
Sittercity, founded in 2001, is America's largest and most trusted online solution for connecting families with high-quality, local caregivers, including babysitters, nannies, tutors, elder care providers, pet sitters, and housekeepers. With over 2 million members nationwide, Sittercity connects families with pre-screened caregivers by providing detailed profiles with photos, parent reviews, background checks, up-to-date availability, references and caregiving experience. In fact, every 30 seconds Sittercity connects a family with the local caregiver that meets its unique needs. As the Department of Defense's solution of choice, military families in all four branches (Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force) have access to Sittercity funded through an exclusive Department of Defense contract. Many other leading employers provide Sittercity's Corporate Program as an employee benefit including UnitedHealth Group, MasterCard, Northwestern University, Avon and Children's Medical Center of Dallas.

SOURCE Sittercity