Baby-Sitting Gives Youth Group Profit

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28179, 18 January 1957, Page 2

Baby-Sitting Gives Youth Group Profit

What does a baby-sitter do when a child wakes up and whimpers for its mother, Ipng before she is due to come home? That is the question which harries the minds of most sitters as they settle down to a quiet evening as soon as the front door closes behind the baby’s parents. “I don’t know what I’d do,” said Miss Marjorie Webb, a sitter on regular call. “I think I'd just rely on my intuition, but so far my young charges have all slept peacefully through until their mothers’ return.” Marjorie is a member of the Young People’s Group of St. Mary's Church. Merivale. an organisation which provides sitters at Is 8d an hour, under its community help service. An exception for Marjorie is a family of dear little boys whose only failing is that they hate going to bed, she says. Sometimes young men of the club have had trouble with crying babies. How did they cope? “Well, one of them told me he just stood by the cot and watched helplessly, anxiously waiting for the time when the pictures would end.” she replied. Others have been known to “goo and cluck” at the child until it submitted and went back to sleep. A few resort, in desperation. to the age-old compromise of rocking the cradle. “We give no instructions on how to manage a fretful child; we leave that to the sitters’ common sense and hope that mothers of restless" babies will not ask for our services too often,” she said.

When all is quiet and, mercifully. it usually is, the sitter can spend a pleasant evening listening to the radio, knitting or reading—and at a profit. With permission from their “employers” some sitters take a friend along for company.

Dual Purpose Baby-sitting serves a dual purpose. It gives young mothers the opportunity of having time off from family ties and enjoying a night out with their husbands. From the youth group’s point of view it means bolstering up funds. From 8 p.m. till 11 p.m. the

sitter charges ss. After 11 p.m. the charge goes up to 2s 6d an hour. The sitter receives a quarter of the money paid for the assignment. The rest goes to the group's community help service fund. If a sitter finds she is unable to keep her appointment the onus is on her to find a substitute.

From the community service fund the group buys sports equipment, study books and other recreational facilities. A donation was recently made to the Hungarian Relief Appeal from the same source and part of the cost of the group’s film projector was met from this fund.

The Young People’s Group of St. Mary’s Church has some 70 members, about 40 of whom volunteer regularly for babysitting. The service was founded two years ago and it was Miss Lois McElwee's idea that babysitting should be included. Miss Margaret Tyndall is the convener of the sub-committee which organises baby-sitters’ duties. Other Services But baby-sitting is only one of the services offered by the group’s community help scheme. Young men help in other ways by doing gardening, helping to clear sections, cutting wood, cleaning windows, mowing lawns and other odd jobs,’ which they undertake mainly for elderly persons who cannot manage these chores themselves. Charges are based on the type of work required to be done. As in the case of baby-sitting the greater percentage of earnings goes to the group fund. The community help service is a practical way of expressing the church's concern for the welfare of the people in its parish. It is also a means of helping to finance another important field of the church's work —the training of the young people who will some day be its leaders.