COVID-19 and nanny

We sent our nanny home a couple weeks ago. We gifted/granted her some pay when we told her we would discontinue having her for awhile, and then helped her apply for unemployment (we pay her via payroll, so she's eligible). She is receiving some unemployment, not close to what we were paying her, so we'll have to evaluate as this goes on, if that's enough for our nanny. We want to support her if we can, and she's also helping run errands for us in between too.

Hey Oakland Fam- If you plan on retaining your Nanny maybe speak to her about a reduction in pay for now and/or set up Zoom sessions and keep her engaged as well. 

If you have been paying your nanny “on the books” (ie paying taxes) then she should be eligible for unemployment insurance. If you have been paying under the table then I think you have a moral obligation to continue paying until the crisis is over, at least as long as you still have income since she will have no income protection otherwise. 

We are paying our nanny her regular paychecks but asked her to stay home. She offered to come help with the kids sometimes or take them for a walk, but our personal choice is to fully self quarantine. For what it's worth, my husband and I are not considered essential workers, and both of us are still getting paid because we can work remotely. (FYI That is not going well with a 3 year old and 10 month old at home, but we are splitting days and doing our best!). We paid her through the end of April, and then we'll evaluate what's happening. It may be that we ask her to seek other work, but until she finds it, we will pay her.

If you are essential worker my read of the shelter in place rule is that you are allowed to continue using childcare (small daycare or nanny), though it depends on your local order. My husband and I are also essential workers within the rule but are able to mostly work from home though definitely have to go into the office at times since not everything can be done from home.  Since my child is in daycare we chose to keep him home and alternate days in office when needed since by being at work we are at higher risk of catching it and our daycare provider is elderly and I did not want to risk my kid bringing it to her or infecting other kids there who can bring it home to their families.  So even though daycare is open for essential workers and we qualify to keep attending we chose to keep our kid home but are still paying her.  If I had a nanny and being an essential worker I would continue using her so I can do my work productively without being up all night making up the hours.  So if you are essential worker and need to continue working and your local rules are same as my (i.e. essential workers can use childcare), you could continue using nanny's services and continue employing her. 

I am paying my nanny as long as I'm getting paid. It's the right thing to do.

We are continuing to pay our nanny, though she is not working during the SIP, so long as our income remains the same.  

I had our babysitter (four days a week, 7 hours) stop coming because I just couldn't take the risk, but we are continuing to pay her. Our babysitter's husband was laid off and so they would be in big trouble, financially, without her income. Since my husband and I can both work from home and at least for now our income remains the same, this is our commitment to caring for others in a time of crisis. I have also pre-paid my hairdresser for a cut and color, to be received at a future time. :-)

If your nanny is a W-2 employee, they can file for unemployment by the state. Depending on what you pay your nanny, with the extra $600/week right now, they might actually make more money than what you them ironically. However; they need to be willing and able to work once the time comes. 

We don’t need a nanny but continue to pay the housecleaners. We can afford it and they need the income. 

My husband and I are both working from home. We are giving our nanny this time off with full pay. She will still have to pay her bills (even the rent protections right now require tenants to pay back rent after we get through the crisis) and since we are still getting paid, we can afford to pay her and will continue to do so. 

Even though you say you're still working, you ask about if you're not working, how do you pay your nanny. If you can't afford to pay your nanny, I'd have a frank conversation with him or her about it. The nanny should qualify for unemployment, I understand, because they've loosened unemployment requirements. It probably won't 100% replace his or her paycheck, though. But be up front. I'm guessing you will want your nanny to come back once we get through this crisis, so treat him or her as you would want to be treated... Frankly, if you treat him or her poorly, I wouldn't be surprised if he or she started looking for a new family once work resumes!

I’m also an essential worker, though able to work from home exclusively. We have continued to use our nanny as she is also in a small household that is able to shelter in place. While I know this does extend our physical household, I couldn’t do my job without this childcare. Everyone is self monitoring for any symptoms and would pause if anyone developed concerning symptoms. 

As an essential worker, I wish you and yours good health.

As we are all aware many are suffering great financial uncertainty and hardship at this time. I believe if you are getting paid and it was in your budget you should continue to pay your nanny.  

Hi there! We are struggling with the same issue. If we didn't feel so connected to our nanny, we'd probably end the engagement all together given we cannot have the her come to our home or watch our son right now. But this becomes very difficult because we sincerely care for her and our little boy loves her so much. Still, if we stay under a shelter in place order for 2 months or more (which is highly likely; probably going through the summer), it isn't realistic for us to continue paying full time wages. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place. We want to ensure our nanny is taken care of, and we don't want to release her and possibly lose her to another family! Something I've been thinking about is calculating what her unemployment wages would equal and offering her that for the next 3 months. Then reassessing in early July. But honestly, I'd love to hear any other feedback or ideas. 

We paid our nanny ~3 weeks pay + PTO accrued from when the shelter in place order went into effect.  We had her on the books so we formally terminated her contract and she was able to file for unemployment.  We fully intend to start up with her again when shelter in place ends.  We considered just continuing to pay her, but since we will take a hit financially from the COVID fall out and because we knew she could file for unemployment we decided that paying her a few additional weeks was the best compromise.   

I firmly believe that as long as you are getting paid your full salary, your nanny should be getting paid her full salary—whether or not she is continuing to care for your child. Then the question becomes whether you have the nanny care for your child or not, and I think this is quite a personal decision. We also kept our nanny share going the first week after shelter in place, but called it off the following week because I started to show flu like symptoms. We will not resume until everyone is completely in the clear—and honestly if by that point we have gotten more used to balancing childcare and work, we may just hold off until this is all over. We don’t want our nanny to feel pressure to work during this time, and it’s just not worth the risk. However, if you’re an essential worker and can’t get around it, I think that’s understandable. 

Ours is only part time, but yes, we are continuing to pay and she hasn't come at all since the order went into effect. She has worked for us for years and as long as our income does not change, we will continue to pay. I believe that generally in the Bay Area, nannies are treated very well and the expectation is that we continue to pay if it's a situation where they are not choosing not to work - it's just been thrust upon them. If you lose your job or have to take a pay cut, then I think you would give notice and pay them out for a couple weeks and then stop. But otherwise, pay if you can. This is hard for everyone.

As long as your job remains paying/unaffected, I would suggest you continue to pay your nanny. Our family is still employed, both working from home, and we have our nanny come to care for our toddler -- we're stuffed like sardines in one room and she has the rest of our small house but it's what we have to deal with at this time. Instead of the usual 9-10 hrs a day we used to have our nanny, we keep a maximum of 8 hrs a day and will continue to pay her and have her with our toddler as long as we can. I think it's both important for our toddler but also ensuring she can care for herself in this time.

Hi, I was wondering the same thing.  We have a great gal who has been with us for a number of months now just once per week for childcare and light housekeeping.  She came over once during the first week of shelter in place but the second week we decided to have her not come, for the sake of social distancing but also because I was fearful that my company might do layoffs.  We gave her one week's pay and said we'd be in touch after this is all over, if we still have a need.  I was just wondering how other families are handling this because if we do still have a need, I don't want to lose her.

I am working from home, but my husband was laid off. We are hopeful he will get his job back, but are not sure; he filed for unemployment. Since we are not getting our full salaries any longer, but we love our nanny and want her to be OK during this time (she's not eligible for unemployment since we pay her under the table by her choice; I know one of her families paid her for 2 weeks, but will not be paying her after that), we negotiated to pay her for our normal number of hours, but at our nanny share rate for all of them. We usually only have the share rate at half the number of hours and pay a higher rate for the other half when it's just her and our baby. She understood and was OK with this. Since we and our baby love her so much, we also wanted to make sure she would stay available for when we can have her come again. We are planning to keep paying her through the duration of this, within reason, but we are planning money-wise that the shelter-in-place will last until ~June.

I'd seriously consider having your nanny work, and trying to help her understand the protocol around distancing so your family's exposure is still small.  This will continue until there is a vaccine, which is Nov/Dec minimum given the required 6 mo clinicial trial - most of which haven't even started yet.  When it was 3 weeks, us all juggling made sense.  6 months is not possible - someone in the family will end up quitting to provide childcare, and that's a lot of destroyed careers, primarily for the moms/women.  We actually just *hired* a nanny because our preschool closed and 4 weeks without help was as long as we could go without significantly hurting our teams/coworkers by only working part-time.  We are making a smart long-term decision for the well-being of our family - including our son who we don't want watching us take conference calls half of every day when we both need to work with senior leaders at the same time!