Babysitting Co-op rules, guidelines and directions

There don’t have to be many but your babysitting coop rules, (guidelines or directions) do need to be well documented and understood by all members of your team.

When starting your coop you need to make sure you start with a clear set of babysitting coop rules so that everyone knows how the process will work.

Rules to consider include:

How small/large can the co-op can become: a minimum of five and maximum of 25 families is generally judged to be the best.
How will new members be introduced?
Starting points for each family – you should give each new member some points to start out with.
How many hours is each point worth – are the values the same by day of week and time of day?
Minimum points below which a family is not allowed to request a sit – can members go into “credit” by having a negative balance.
How will the booking process operate – will it be centrally managed and if so be whom and how?

You will probably also want to have medical authorization forms available so that families can formally authorize the sitting family to undertake emergency medical treatment if required.

Lastly included in any set of good babysitting coop guidelines is making sure that you have regular (perhaps quarterly or six monthly) whole of coop meeting so that everyone can introduce themselves and get to know each other. Normally these are held at one member’s house or in a park so that the children can come along.

Of course if you become a member of HelpingHero all of these babysitting coop directions are automatically created and managed for you. Sign-up now or take our tour to find out more about HelpingHero.