The ten agencies were contacted by the makers of the programme 'Who's Looking After Your Child', broadcast on ITV last week. According to the producer, Diana Muir, they were 'big-name and smaller nanny agencies chosen at random in central and south-west London'.
The programme repeated an exercise from a similar programme five years ago in which a researcher went with a false CV to ten nanny agencies chosen at random to see if they would pick up that she was not a real nanny. But none did.
Ms Muir said, 'We expected that they would have checked for her original identity documents, spotted a gap in her CV and queried about her having her contact referees on a mobile phone number. No agency was bothered by the mobile phone number, even though it could have been anybody. We would have thought the agencies would have wanted either a home or work number.'
Ms Muir added that one or two of the agencies told the researcher they had no work. 'But we do not know whether that was the case due to the current downturn in nanny jobs or if that was what they said if they did not want to place someone.'
She added, 'Nobody suspected, as far as we could tell, that she wasn't a nanny. Several rang up and offered her interviews with families without properly checking her CV.
'We concluded that agencies can't be relied on to vet nannies, even though parents are paying them 1,000 to do so.'
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)has written to Yorkshire Television, which made the programme, asking for the names of the ten agencies. Peter Cullimore, chair of the REC's childcare section, said, 'If any of them are members of the REC and have not followed our code of practice, they will be subject to our disciplinary procedures, which could possibly lead to their expulsion as they do not do the RECor other nanny agencies any good.'
