The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has criticised the Professional Association of Nursery Nurses (PANN) for its role in creating a new body, the Association of Nanny Agencies (ANA). The new body, which is being administered initially by PANN, has been set up by around 30 agencies covering much of the UK, but is open to wider membership.
PANN professional officer Tricia Pritchard said she hoped the ANA would enable agencies 'to share knowledge and expertise, and offer support to each other on a non-competitive basis'. She added that the nanny agencies had set up the ANA because 'the feeling was very much that what is already out there by way of support to the industry is not representative of the industry'.
Mrs Pritchard said, 'The initiative was proposed by the agencies themselves and will give agencies the opportunity to access information, exchange and influence strategies, and access resources currently either not available to them or not yet known to them.'
But Elizabeth Elder, chair of the childcare division at REC, was dismissive of the ANA's avowed aim of setting industry-wide standards. She said, 'It could be potentially very misleading to both nannies and families for any such group to establish themselves to be an industry voice without the proper legal backing and expertise to cover the legislative issues surrounding this business.'
Amanda Cotton, owner of the agency Nannysearch and one of the ANA's founders, said, 'This association is something we have all wanted for a long time, an organisation run by a neutral body and not a commercial organisation, although we would rather that it was Ofsted. It will be a very welcome move for small- and medium-sized agencies and it will help those that cannot afford REC membership.'
Mrs Elder said that it cost an agency 550 to join REC for a year, and that this included access to four in-house legal advisors and a legal helpline. Membership of the ASA is free and open to all nanny agencies, while the association is being run on a purely voluntary basis to begin with.
Ms Cotton said there needed to be an organisation that both represented and policed nanny agencies. 'The problem with REC is that it has a code of conduct for nanny agencies that I do not find acceptable, and it appears to have no disciplinary procedures for members who break this code.'
However, a REC spokeswoman said that in 2002 it had investigated 116 complaints against its members, with 43 per cent of the complaints made by temporary workers and 21 per cent by clients. It said that the 'vast majority' of complaints investigated were resolved successfully between REC and the parties involved, while three members were issued compliance orders, one was expelled by REC's Professional Standards Committee and another was asked to resign. The spokeswoman said that this demonstrated that REC took 'its role as standards bearer for the profession seriously'.
Another ANA member is Janet White, who also belongs to REC and has run the Janet White nanny agency in Roundhay, Leeds, since 1978. She said, 'I very much support the registration of nannies and nanny agencies. I would like to see REC and PANN work together hand-in-hand as it is really important to get all agencies registered.
'I welcome the new association as a step towards the registration of nannies and agencies.'
