Putting a Nanny Background Check in Place – There Is No One Easy Source of Answers
In a world where people charged with child care turn into out-of-control maniacs, in a world where priests often come to be accused of crimes against children, you can’t ever feel comfortable about engaging the services of a nanny for your child before you run a background check. Of course, a nanny background check does offer itself as one of the most important situations in life one of these checks could be called for. In general though, background checks should be an important part of any employment process. It keeps people safe from the dangers of hiring someone who is an unknown quantity.
Of course, a regular nanny background check will cost you something – usually, something in the region of $50 for each check. You might take a page out of the rulebook landlords follow, and charge the background check fee of any nanny who shows up for an interview. After all, if you interview 10 nannies for the job, that $50 background check fee could quickly add up. Still, as legitimate a charge as that might be, it’s hardly fair to charge a person looking for work something as substantial as $50. If you could pay it yourself, you could probably use it as a deduction come tax return time.
As far as a nanny background check is concerned, the most important kind that you can have done is a check for a criminal record. While it does sound like an impressive thing to do to just ring up a person’s name on the computer to check to see if they have a dodgy background, the criminal records system in the United States is hardly a unified one. Each state has its own records database. And even if you’re trying to find a person’s record for a specific state, there are many that don’t allow it at all. Some require that you supply fingerprints. About the only reliable way of getting a criminal record check done can be to hire a private investigator. This does cost something substantial though.
A court records check is something that you can done with a bit more ease. These are records that are in the public domain, and you can easily go down to your local courthouse and see if they have anything on their indexes. You need to do a search at the county level to get any dependable information. Merely searching at the state level won’t work. Counties are often required to report all their cases to the state level courts.
An easy way to pull a good deal of information about a person online is to check with their Social Security number. You get information on where the person lives and has lived in the past, and it doesn’t cost anything much at all. Another easy source of information is a potential nanny’s driving record. The DMV’s driving records are public domain, and for a modest fee of about $20, you can usually pull your nanny’s record. After all, a careless driving record is a great sign a person is not really as responsible as they appear.
