I don't normally post reviews but I feel in this case I have a duty to warn other parents. We hired Saffra in June-22 after she impressed in an interview. She was only able to produce a reference from 2015, but we let it go, figured maybe people just weren't getting back to her. Her first day it was clear she didn't want to make too much of an effort. She was happy to park herself on a chair for naptime, and only did basic tidying when we prompted her. Our 10 month old didn't warm to her, and she seemed incapable or unwilling to make the effort to change this. End of day one no bottles made up. Tuesday morning she called in sick. Tuesday evening she texted to say she was feeling better, would be in Wednesday. This caused us to not book temp help. Wednesday morning she called in sick again. Thursday morning she said she was going to A&E to be hooked up to a drip. We ended up getting someone for Friday, so told her to rest up and see her Monday.

Saffra came in and worked Monday and Tuesday. Similar approach as before, and again not able to calm the baby down. Worth noting that other temp nannies we've brought in for a single day have managed to get our son happy / comfortable with them, after being apprehensive initially, so it's not him. Wednesday morning she texted in sick again, but on Wednesday evening she texted to again say she was feeling much better and would be in Thursday. Again we fell for it and cancelled the temp help we had manged to line up. Didn't show on Thursday, and we ended things there.

Another odd thing - she seemed to not have phone credit. She wasn't able to contact us unless she was connected to wifi. Not something she had mentioned. After we ended things she started sending nasty texts telling us our house was a dump and calling us "penny pinchers" because we had deducted 30 minutes from her final payment (she turned up 30 mins late one of the days she actually worked).

Do I believe she was sick at any point? No. Do I know what she was hoping to achieve? No idea. It doesn't stack up. What I would say is that based on what we observed, even if she didn't have the reliability issues, it would have gone the same way eventually. She doesn't have anything like a natural, warm way with babies, and a complete lack of proactivity. It's clear now why she couldn't produce a reference from the last few years, so I think that's the key takeaway - always insist on a recent reference.

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