For parents
Someone who knows their name.
Your child spends the afternoon in a retired teacher’s living room, with one other child and nobody else. The same person every week, who knows what they are reading and who they fell out with at lunch.
Both figures are for a full week of afternoons across the school year, billed in twelve equal months so the amount never moves, and both are what actually leaves your account in post-tax dollars after the dependent-care benefit. Not a headline rate with fees underneath it. Summer is a separate plan, and hours beyond your plan are billed as hours — see below.
What you receive
- Five afternoons, and the days school forgets about.
- From the school gate until about six, plus the full days inside the school year when school is shut and you are not — winter and spring recess, mid-winter break, conference days, Election Day. Those are in the plan already, because twelve equal payments across a thirty-six-week school year is what pays for them. If you only need three afternoons, you only pay for three.
- Summer is its own plan, priced honestly.
- Nine weeks of full days is not a rounding error — it is roughly half as much care again as the whole school year. Folding it into the headline would mean charging every family for it every month, including the ones using camp. So summer is quoted separately and you take it or you don’t.
- Extra hours are billed as hours.
- A picked-up shift, a late surgery, a week of doubles. Additional hours are charged at your plan’s hourly rate — no premium for short notice, no surge — and the carer is paid for every one of them. The honest limit is supply rather than price: extra hours depend on someone in your pod being free, so the more notice you can give, the more likely we can cover it. Some employers choose to cover overage hours too — worth asking yours, particularly if you work shifts.
- Two carers cover your week, not one.
- This is the part that makes it survivable. One carer’s dentist appointment does not collapse your Tuesday, and you are never one phone call away from leaving work early.
- A ratio that is the whole point.
- Two children, never more. It is not a number we would negotiate under pressure — it is also what keeps this legally exempt from group day-care licensing, in a home rather than a facility.
- Food handled, including yours.
- Your child’s meals on care days arrive at the carer’s home with the carer’s own groceries, with allergies, dietary rules and cultural requirements already set up. You do not pack anything.
- Vetting you can actually inspect.
- Every carer is fingerprinted and cleared through the State Central Register before a first afternoon, every home is visited, and everyone holds current CPR and first aid. Every session carries real insurance — homeowner’s policies exclude paid childcare, which is the gap that makes informal arrangements risky.
- You can see the afternoon.
- The app shows you who is with your child, who the other child is, when they arrived, what they ate and when they were collected — without turning the carer’s living room into a surveillance exercise.
If money is the obstacle, say so on the form. Our foundation covers families who qualified for a New York State childcare voucher and are still on the waiting list. Those places are staffed by volunteers, and those families pay nothing at all. There is no shame in ticking that box and no disadvantage to it — it goes to a different list, not a lower one.
Put your family down
A waitlist, not a contract. No card, no deposit, no commitment.
We will email you when we open in your neighbourhood. We never sell or share what you tell us, and we will not contact your employer without asking you first.
You’re on the list.
We will write when we open near you. If you told us your employer, we may come back to ask whether an introduction is still welcome.