First of all, DO NOT hire a 20-something nanny/opare! You are inviting tension into your house. Believe you me, your wife might thank me for this.

Find a good momacita or older woman that has been around the block and is free of the FB/Snapchat/Twitter bs.

My sis operates Canadian Au Pair Solutions out of Vancouver. She is also a police officer so she can perhaps give you some advice/help. Maybe even give you some legal advice regarding the Facebook post.

https://aupairsolutions.ca/about-us/

It only means that she hasn't been caught doing anything wrong. And if she does something wrong, her mental illness will be a free ticket out of everything.

Lots of replies here, and a lot of them seemingly advocating just dropping the girl without bothering for any additional info. Not sure I understand that.

She posted this publicly. I can't see how you could get in trouble by asking her about her public FB post. If she refuses to answer or give more details, then you have to make a decision, but it seems to me that the obvious first step is to talk to her about it and get more information. You simply don't have enough, in my opinion, to come to a decision, given the difficulty you face if you simply fire her immediately.

It's possible that her mental condition is such that she's a danger, but if everyone you've talked to has given positive feedback, and she's clearly not trying to hide her illness since she posted about it publicly, I think it's reasonable to give her the benefit of at least sitting down for a conversation before making a snap decision.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Are you really her employer? Or are you a client of hers? Those are two very different things.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

If the nanny works out of your home, you provide food for your kid, toys, a stroller, etc you are her employer and need to register with cra and worksafe.

If you are dropping off your kid at someone's house and they provide everything, you are their client, they invoice you, and you pay them.

Or you can just pay the nanny under the table like it seems 95% of people do.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

That is exactly what we did and it turns out she's dealing with a form of anxiety. She is receiving treatment here but is trying to do an outpatient treatment for her specific condition out of Vancouver. She told us that in the past, before she had a grasp of what she was dealing with she would get anxiety ttacks that would land her in hospital, and at times felt so overwhelmed she could not deal with school, work, etc all at once and would frequently call in sick, etc. Since, she has learned better coping mechanisms, and is aware enough to know when she needs to take a day ahead of time. She has stopped drinking alcohol entirely and has altered her diet. She seems pretty aware and on top of things.

We are sticking with her. If it turns out she needs excessive time off, or it's just not working for us, we will let her go. But both my wife and I don't feel like there are any safety concerns.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

The only thing I would add is that if you see issues beyond the normal hiring a nanny kind of deal cut it off sooner rather than later.

Even though it may seem harsh at the time, it isn't your responsibility to fix her. Once she has been around a while you will form a relationship with her that can make it hard to break away.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

For sure. I have employees and am familiar/comfortable with letting people go if need be. She isn't our friend, she is our employee and if she can't handle it or something isn't feeling right, there won't be any conflicting feelings in letting her go.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Good and keep it that way. Our last day care provider seemed to want to to be buddies with us and would get easily offended by what we said to her. No, you are providing a service and we are your clients. Lets keep it that way.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) we cut ties and she wasn't happy with us.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

I personally would not have brought up the mental health issues, but since you have let that cat out of the bag, and she is your employee, you have some work to do.

Make sure you document the hell out of every little thing that goes wrong. Now that she knows you know about the mental health issues, if you fire her for being a shite nanny, she will likely sue you for firing her over the mental health history. IANAL so I don't know how "protected" mental health issues are where you live, but you just opened yourself up to an employment lawsuit no matter what you fire her for. Documentation of things she does wrong that don't go back to her mental health will be very important if you ever do have to fire her.

Have you also considered the insurance ramifications of having an employee in the home? Do you have workers comp insurance? Employment liability insurance? Not sure how it works in Canada, but if she is truly an employee of yours then it might be something to look into.

The way we have it set up is I deal with her money, paper work, employment stuff etc. My wife is her primary point of contact for anything baby related. If she has to go, I will be the one having that conversation. I really don't care if she ends up hating me. My wife would be perfectly capable as she is pretty cut throat but we find it easier to separate roles this way.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

We have adjusted insurance, have worksafe coverage, are registered with CRA etc. Have covered the bases that way.

Yes, I realize we have put ourselves in a bit of a vunerable position re: mental health issue. Not what I would have preferred to do but is what it is at this point. I agree re: documenting. I think if we let her go, she can't really claim the mental illness card as we did not let her go when we found out, it was because of her job performance. Also, here, our duty to accommodate her condition has limitations including hardship on the employer and safety issues. Would be pretty easy to argue that her not being able to come to work, as a nanny, is creating hardship on us we cannot accommodate. It's not like we are McDonald's and can get another person to cover her shift.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Good luck to you and hope it works out. On one hand I wish there was not so much stigma around mental health issues so that people would be more apt to get the counseling they need if they do indeed need it. But on the other hand you have a situation like this where having a mental health issue background makes hiring iffy. Bit of a sticky widget you might say.

Only comment I have is that now you've decided to use her, I would have nanny cams through out the house. You should probably check local laws on this, but since it is your home hopefully that isn't an issue.

I have some young female relatives who have suffered some anxiety attacks and are dealing with it with help. I wouldn't hesitate to use them as a nanny.

In most cases, someone who admits, talks about, and seeks treatment for mental health issues can be a really good hire. I mean, with the rest of the "normal" populous, you've got a 50% chance, or more, of getting someone with mental health issues who does not admit them and does not get treatment.

One of our best nannies had mental health issues later (don't know details). She is still imo the best one we had and a fine person for whom I have utmost respect.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

So it's been around a year since we hired our nanny and I thought I should update this thread.

Our nanny has been an absolute rock for us. She called in sick once all year, was never late, always left the house clean, and most importantly, our daughter absolutely loves her. Every day, she had some new activity or adventure planned for our daughter, and the kid has absolutely blossomed and come out of her shell with her. I cannot believe we were so lucky to find such a great nanny (as I mentioned before, good childcare in my area is extremely hard to come by).

Next week is her last week, as she is moving to Calgary and we finally got our kid in to a good daycare. My wife and I are going to cry like idiots on her last day.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Glad you had a great year, for every good story there are so many bad ones. I hope your doing a parting gift, maybe extra cash to help with the move or gift card.

We did that as we left our last daycare, we loved her, but as our daughter is getting older we want some more structure and a pre-school program, which our former lady didn't have. Also our daughter was going to be the oldest kid there by at least a year.

Unfortunately new daycare isn't going well, granted its only day 3, but our daughter cries just mentioning going. The lady is nice, program seems great, but I think its the change that is effecting her. I really hope it works out because the plus side of this daycare is its 2 doors down from us. So makes my commute so much easier.