It’s that time of year again: summer is here and that means your children are out of school. Your children are likely looking forward to a lot of fun and relaxation during the warm summer months, but for you, these months may cause a bit of anxiety because you could be left scrambling to find reliable childcare during the time that you're at work.

On June 17, 2015, Oregon Senate Bill 552 was signed into law, making Oregon the 5th state to enact a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights. The law becomes effective January 1, 2016.

The Oregon legislation is very similar to New York's 2010 Domestic Worker Bill of Rights and includes the following provisions.

The references that a nanny candidate provides are a great resource for insight into how that nanny might fit your family’s unique personality and needs. While contacting references can be time-consuming, it’s a completely necessary step in the process of hiring a new nanny.

Are you taking your nanny along on your vacation this year? Thinking about how nice it would be to have an extra pair of hands and some couple time with your partner? Taking your nanny on your family vacation can be an awesome experience or a miserable one - the difference is in the planning and attention to details.

The keys to successfully vacationing with your nanny:

What level of care can you expect from a senior home caregiver? Well, every family’s needs are unique, so the services you can expect in a typical day from your senior caregiver will be customized to what you requested during your initial assessment with a senior caregiver. Below is a broad list of services you can expect from a general senior home caregiver.

HWS recently received the following question from a new nanny employer. We receive queries like this periodically and want to share our answer.

Finding a senior home care agency that meets the caregiver’s needs and the senior’s needs can require some research, but finding the agency that fits your whole family’s needs is worth it. While screening senior home care agencies, make sure to ask the following questions:

Finding the perfect nanny can feel like finding a needle in a haystack, which makes it all the more important that you hang on to her once you find her! HomeWork Solutions wants your nanny experience to be as smooth as possible, so we’ve outlined nine of our favorite suggestions to establish a strong relationship with your nanny.

Think you are saving money by taking time off of work to care for your elderly relative? A new study by Rand Corporation, one of the leading independent health policy research programs, investigated the cost of informal caregiving of the elderly by friends and relatives. The cost is calculated by the valuing the hours family caregivers give up in order to provide care (in the US, this comes to 30 billion hours annually).

Many nannies work a series of short term assignments throughout the year. These can range from several days to several months. Examples include nannies that cover for a full time nanny's vacation, step in to help when the regular family caregiver is ill or unavailable, or to fill in between full time nannies when the family is recruiting.