A better way to find your next babysitter in NYC

Forwhen is a babysitting service for date night, last-minute, or one-off care—think of us as a babysitting concierge service. We match you with experienced, caring, and vetted sitters, all via SMS. We handle finding the sitter, checking for availability, and making sure they’re a good fit for your family, so you can spend more time focusing on everything else.

We do the heavy lifting of personally interviewing and vetting every sitter so that they’re ready to go whenever you need them. For every job you request, you won’t get a bunch of responses that you need to spend time sifting through—you work directly with our founder to find the perfect sitter for your family. 

All of our sitters follow our code of conduct so that families receive consistent care, even when working with a sitter for the first time. We believe in engaging and age-appropriate play, staying away from screens, cleaning up after ourselves and the kids, and respecting your house rules.

Here’s what our process looks like:

• Selective recruitment: Most sitters come to us through referrals and targeted outreach. Our founder interviews every sitter to hear about their background in childcare, related work experience, and childcare philosophy to ensure it’s a fit. We look for sitters who are clear, timely communicators and have a genuine interest in childcare. Bonus points if they’ve worked with kids in a professional setting, but we also welcome sitters with all backgrounds who just love taking care of little ones. 

• Background checks: All sitters pass a third-party background check before they book their first job. The check includes a global watchlist search, national criminal search, sex offender search and SSN trace.

• Reference calls: We always speak to a previous family they’ve worked with and ask about their relationship with their kids, overall personality, and reliability. 

• Onboarding: All sitters must agree to our code of conduct in order to be a part of our platform. 

• Accountability: We ask parents for a review of each sitter after every sit to make sure everything runs smoothly. Any repeated instances of lateness, less than 5-star reviews, or any other issues will result in no longer booking jobs through Forwhen.

We cover the following in our interviews:

• Background in childcare

• What activities they love doing with kids

• What they find most challenging about babysitting

• How they get to know kids and families upon first meeting

• How they learn the rules of the household they’re entering into

• Examples of times when they’ve had to deescalate a tantrum or deal with kids who are acting out

• How they handle a situation where a kid is asking for something and they’re unsure of the parents' rules

• Examples of any emergency situations they’ve dealt with

If they don’t seem like they have a genuine love for kids or have shown to be unreliable at this point, we don’t move forward with them as a sitter with Forwhen.

Our founder Ellie is a former babysitter and current mom to a baby girl. She sat for families in Manhattan and Brooklyn before starting a family of her own. Before Forwhen, she was a customer experience leader at top NYC companies like Away and Paperless Post. She’s interviewed hundreds of sitters and understands the needs of NYC parents after 13 years of living in Brooklyn. She is constantly talking to fellow parents about their needs and runs all interview questions and policy updates by a circle of trusted moms. But you know your own needs the best! If you feel most comfortable speaking to a sitter before booking, that’s totally fine.

Within daytime hours, you’ll get a response from us within 1-2 hours. Most of the time, we can find someone for you that same day. If the first option we send as available isn’t a fit, feel free to request a swap.

Of course! It’s up to you if you want to connect with your babysitter or one of their references ahead of the sit, but that’s totally fine with us. If you want to schedule a time to meet ahead of the sit, we ask that you still confirm the sit date and then connect with the babysitter directly to find a time to meet. That way they won’t get booked up with another job, and we can always swap you with someone else if it isn’t a fit after the meetup.

We don’t charge a membership fee for parents or sitters, so you have the flexibility to book on demand. Our sitters each set their own hourly rate—this is shared with you before booking. Forwhen charges a small per sit fee to parents: $10 for your first sit and $5 for each subsequent sit.

Yes! If you’d like to cover the cost of a babysitter for a night or two for parents in your life, just send us an email at ellie@forwhencare.com and we’ll set this up for you.