How we vet the people we send.
Every caregiver we send is hired by one of the owners, has real experience with children, has references we've spoken to ourselves, and has passed a background screen covering the last seven years. Here's exactly what that involves.
What every caregiver goes through
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Hired by the owners, personally
Every caregiver is interviewed by one of the two people who own this business, Stephanie or Jonas. We don't farm out our hiring, and we don't hand the decision to anyone we wouldn't trust with it ourselves.
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Real, sustained experience
Occasionally watching cousins or the neighbors' school-age kids isn't enough. We look for real, sustained experience caring for children in the age group they'd be looking after: work that goes well beyond passing experience.
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An interview about the whole person
Experience gets someone into the room, but it doesn't decide anything. The interview is about the whole person: their judgement, their temperament, how they think about children and the families they work for. The question we're answering is whether this is someone we want to send into our clients' homes to care for their children.
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References we speak to ourselves
We verify how each reference actually knows the applicant, and we don't move forward until we've spoken to them ourselves.
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A thorough background screen, at our cost
Run before anyone is placed with a family, and paid for by us, never by the applicant. Nobody meets your children on the strength of a pending check. It covers:
- A Social Security Number trace, which identifies every address and alias linked to the caregiver over the last seven years.
- Criminal history searches at state, county, federal and national level, for felony and misdemeanor convictions, everywhere they have lived, worked or gone to school in the last seven years.
- Sex offender registries: the national registry, and every state registry where they have lived or worked.
- Federal sanctions lists: the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals list and the export denial lists.
- Fingerprinting through TrustLine, California's registry for in-home caregivers.
- Repeated at least every 36 months for every caregiver, for as long as they work for us.
Vetting isn't a one-time event
A check on the day someone is hired says nothing about the following year. These are the parts that keep running.
Anyone can report a concern about us, our caregivers or anything they have seen, without giving a name and without being a client. Report a concern.
We are mandated reporters
Childcare providers in Washington and California are required by law to report suspected child abuse or neglect, and we treat that as a floor, not a ceiling. Our caregivers are told during orientation what to do, and they're never put in a position where raising something costs them their job.
Still want to ask us something?
If there's a part of this you'd like in more detail, just ask. We'd rather answer than have you guess.