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| Image credit: Photo by kandyjaxx on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
When my son Austen was two, my husband disclosed his addiction and spent a morning on the phone desperately looking for a marriage therapist willing to see us on a weekend. But once we had that appointment, having no family nearby, we had to spend another crazed interval looking for someone who could watch Austen while we went out. And I still remember how I, unable to bear speaking to anyone, I covered my puffy, red eyes in sunglasses and waved from the car, like a devastated celebrity, while Mark dropped Austen off with some friends of ours.
There's nothing like having your marriage almost fall apart to scare you into spending time working on it (and nothing like falling apart yourself to scare you into working on yourself). And thus began our own need for regular, reliable childcare. But where to find the right person? We've tried a number of methods, as have other friends with special needs children, and (without giving away any anonymity blowing details) here are some things that have either worked for us or for others:
- Post "sitter wanted" notices at local colleges, universities or training schools. Look for places that offer programs in child development, nursing, occupational therapy, speech therapy, psychology, etc. Students in these programs will be most likely to be interested in (and most likely to be skillful at) caring for children with special needs.
- Ask friends with special needs children if they know a good sitter.
- Ask your child's teacher or school for leads.
- Use a private nanny or sitter agency. Private agencies can sometimes help find caregivers for children with special needs. There are even some agencies who specialize in finding help for special needs children. Be sure to let the agency know what your child's needs are so they can help find the best match.
- Check for respite services available in your state.
The advantage of using an agency or service is that most will do some type of pre-screening in the form of: an interview, a background check, a reference check or some combination of all of these. (When hiring my sitters I make sure to do all of these, either myself or in combination with an agency.) The disadvantage of private agencies is the higher cost of their services, while the disadvantage of state or local agencies is that you may not have the same individualized choices available with your own search or a private agency.
In addition, some states subsidize respite care services for individuals with disabilities, so getting out may not be as expensive as you think. I was not able to find a nice, easy nationwide "who to contact" database, but a state Department of Health and Human Services or Social Services or a state agency dealing with disability services is a good place to start.
In the six years since that day when we dropped Austen off with friends for an hour to rush out to the emergency therapy session that started us on the road to saving our marriage and sanity, we have made an effort to go out kid-free (for therapy, meetings, religious/spiritual services or just date nights) once a week. So, we've had ample opportunity to try many of the methods above for finding sitters. We have had a number of wonderful sitters, who were with us for years and whom we've been deeply sorry to lose when they had to move on, and we've had some truly awful ones who didn't make it past the first visit. And we've found a method for finding sitters that works for our individual family. So, in spite of the fact that we lost a sitter recently, I do know that we have a very good process for replacing her.
Next up... Training a babysitter to watch a special needs child...
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