Common questions

Otter is the childcare solution we wished existed, so we created it! We match families who need care with trusted sitters in their community, on-demand. Ever thought about sending the "bat signal" when you're in a kidcare bind? We have too! That's why our care options are designed to cater to both future plans and unplanned schedule changes. Sitters benefit from the flexibility to earn money on their schedules while providing quality care.

We keep it simple!

• Sign up: You’ll tell us your name, contact info, and a little bit about you and your kids. 
• Book a sitter: Need care? Submit a booking request for the day and time you need care. Once we have a sitter for you, we’ll text you their profile for you to review and confirm.
• After you confirm, we’ll send you a calendar invite, connect you to your sitter via text 48 hours in advance of your session, and send you a payment link after care. 

We help families find reliable, flexible kidcare, making the impossible things about childcare possible. Some of our most popular care occasions are:

Future plans: Look at you being so ahead of the game. We can book childcare up to a month out — we look forward to seeing you then.

A night out: Nothing should get in the way of the time you spend together, without your kids. Our sitters make date night easy to pull off.

In a pinch: Emergency? Sick nanny? No problem, we can help! We can often fill requests with as little as two hours' notice!

Gaps in care: Have a few hours during the week without childcare? We can help with one-off requests and even help you build a care team!

There are a few mainstays parents typically turn to when trying to grow their network of sitters; from asking friends who they use and recommend to turning to platforms where you have to do the legwork of searching, negotiating, and scheduling yourself.  All those options add to your mental load. Otter aims to reduce your load. From pre-vetting sitters, matching your availability, offering clear transparent pricing, and showing up when your plan A falls through, think of Otter as your easy button for childcare. Just tell us when you need care and we take care of the rest.

We’re here to make sure things run smoothly for our families and sitters. Otter team members are just a text away between the hours of 8 AM and 7 PM PT. If you reach out to us outside of those hours, our team will get back in touch with you as soon as we’re back online.

In the case of a medical or safety emergency inside or outside of support hours, please call 911 immediately.

Our top priority is safety – providing little ones and sitters with a safe and trustworthy environment. Learn more about our trust and safety policies here.

Sure do! We can often confirm sitters in as little as 2 hours notice. The sooner you let us know though, the better; 24-48 hours advance notice is ideal.

Otter sitters are experienced and love providing safe, compassionate care for kids they adore. But, it’s often not all they do. Many of Otter’s sitters are college students, teachers, nurses, or experienced nannies looking to round out their schedules and earn money on their own time.

Our community is made up of highly vetted sitters who have been selected based on their ability to create a safe environment for your children. We can confidently say that we’d leave our own children with Otter sitters in a heartbeat – and we do! 

In order to be active on Otter, every sitter goes through a multi-point vetting process including a skills assessment, background-check, and reference check from previous families.  Otter also offers free CPR and First Aid training opportunities for sitters. 

Otter is currently available in the South Bay, California area (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and the surrounding areas) and Chicago, IL (city limits). We hope to expand to new cities soon. If we're not currently in one of our service areas, you can sign up for our waitlist to be notified when we launch in your city.

Otter offers clear, transparent pricing that varies by market. Currently, we offer one price no matter how many kids you have.

Chicago:

• Bookings more than 48 hours out: $22/hour
• Bookings within 48 hours: $30/hour
• Bookings within 24 hours: $38/hour

South Bay:

• Bookings more than 48 hours out: $25/hour
• Bookings within 48 hours: $35/hour
• Bookings within 24 hours: $45/hour

Note: Bookings made for weekends (Fri - Sun) will incur a $2 additional hourly charge.
Families with 3+ kids will incur a $2 additional hourly charge for the third child and a $1 additional hourly charge for each additional child.

We get it. Occasionally, things come up. 

Changing your booking:

If you’d like to change your booking, please reach out to us via text at (415) 918-6739 or at community@withotter.com. We’ll do our best to accommodate your requested changes based on sitter availability. Requests to shorten a booking less than 24 hours before the start of care will be charged for the full amount of time originally booked.

Canceling your booking:

To compensate your sitter for holding the time for your family, cancellations made less than 24 hours before the start of care will require payment of 50% of the booking cost, including transit fee when applicable.

Cancellations made with more than 24 hours notice will be billed for the first hour of care.

For questions regarding our cancellation policy, reach out to us at community@withotter.com.

We have sitters with experience from infants through high schoolers! We’ll match your family with a sitter who has relevant experience.

We’d love to make that happen! We will add sitters you’ve had before and who you liked to your Care Team, and we will try our best to book you with them based on their availability. 

Our sitters are typically available to provide care 7 days a week from 7 am to 1 am local time. Please let us know if you need care outside those times, and we’ll do our best to accommodate! Our minimum booking time is 2 hours and you can book as much time as you need.

Every sitter active in our community has been verified to meet our extensive Trust & Safety standards. We can confidently say that we’d leave our own children with Otter sitters in a heartbeat – and we do! Learn more about our multi-point vetting process and how we support our sitters below.

Background Check

Every member of the Otter community, including parents and sitters, is background checked so we can foster a safe and trustworthy community. We use Checkr Pro Criminal to run our background checks. It’s a comprehensive search that covers:

• County Criminal Search (Last 7 Years)
• National Criminal Search (Standard)
• Sex Offender Search
• SSN Trace
• Global Watchlist Search

Reference Check & Parent Reviews

Before joining the Otter community, we complete reference checks from a family the sitter has provided care for in the past. Once active on the platform, families leave sitter reviews that we closely monitor.

Skills Assessment

To ensure sitters have relevant experience caring for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-aged children, they must pass an assessment that evaluates their knowledge of sleep and feeding safety, appropriate developmental expectations, and other common caregiving competencies.

Continuing Education

Otter offers free CPR and First Aid training opportunities for sitters to ensure they’re able to stay up to date.

Phone Number Verification

We ensure Otter sitters are registered with valid carriers in the United States and not using internet phone numbers or untraceable phones.

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Here’s our rule of thumb: if your kid is too sick for daycare or school, we can’t help you find care on Otter. We really wish we could help you find care for sick kids; as parents we at Otter know how hard it is when kids are sick.

This policy is in place to protect our community because our sitters are often caring for multiple families, and if they get sick, another family in our community might get sick too.

Now, the details. If you or your children have experienced any of these contagious illness symptoms in the past 24 hours, please do not book a session:

• Vomiting or diarrhea
• A fever over 99 degrees
• Heavy nasal discharge
• Red eye with discharge
• Persistent cough
• Head lice
• A communicable disease, e.g. COVID, flu, mumps, chicken pox, monkeypox, RSV, strep, hepatitis, pneumonia, measles, rubella, scarlet fever, scabies, pertussis, encephalitis, or meningitis.
• If you or your children have been knowingly exposed or recently tested positive for COVID, we ask that you please have a negative test before hosting a care session.

If you need help cancelling a session, please contact Otter and we’d be happy to help!

Otter is the childcare solution we wished existed, so we created it! We match families who need care with trusted sitters in their community, on-demand. Ever thought about sending the "bat signal" when you're in a kidcare bind? We have too! That's why our care options are designed to cater to both future plans and unplanned schedule changes. Sitters benefit from the flexibility to earn money on their schedules while providing quality care.

If you live within Otter’s service area and have at least 1 year of childcare experience, apply to be an Otter sitter here. Tell us your name, contact info, and about your childcare experience. We’ll be in touch from there to get you started with your background check, skills assessment, and referrals.

We created Otter for the people who need it as much as the people who provide it (that’s you!). We couldn’t exist without our amazing community of sitters. We know you lead a full life and Otter allows you to work around your schedule. Here’s how it works:

• Sign up: You’ll tell us your name, contact info, and about your childcare experience. We’ll be in touch from there to get you started with your background check, skills assessment, and referrals.
• Book jobs: Once you’re onboarded, we’ll match you with families in your neighborhood that fit your schedule, preferences and experience. You’ll have a chance to review and accept bookings that fit your needs.
• After you confirm, we’ll send you a calendar invite and connect you to the family via text 48 hours in advance of your session. When it’s time, head over to the family's place and do what you do best - provide care! You'll receive payment for your time and care weekly.

We’re here to make sure things run smoothly for our families and sitters. Otter team members are just a text away between the hours of 8 AM and 7 PM PT. If you reach out to us outside of those hours, our team will get back in touch with you as soon as we’re back online.

In the case of a medical or safety emergency inside or outside of support hours, please call 911 immediately.

Our top priority is safety – providing little ones and sitters with a safe and trustworthy environment. Learn more about our trust and safety policies here.

Otter is currently available in the South Bay, California area (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and the surrounding areas) and Chicago, IL (city limits). We hope to expand to new cities soon. If we're not currently in one of our service areas, you can sign up for our waitlist to be notified when we launch in your city.

We know things come up, but we ask that once you accept a care request you only cancel due to an illness or emergency. Many times, we are the family's backup care option and we take that responsibility seriously. Please text us to let us know as soon as possible, with at least 24 hours notice in advance, so that the family isn’t left without care at the last minute. 

If a family wants to change a confirmed booking, we’ll check in with you to see if you can accommodate it based on your availability. Requests to shorten a booking less than 24 hours before the start of care will be charged for the full amount of time originally booked to compensate you for holding time for the family. If a family cancels a booking within 24 hours, you will still be paid a percentage of the booking. 

As a sitter with Otter, you’ll make a competitive hourly rate based on location and how urgent care is needed. For example, you will make more per hour for last-minute booking requests. If you have questions about specific rates, please reach out to our team!

Otter handles all the payments for you! You’ll get paid out weekly for all of the care sessions you complete that week. Otter sends a payment link to parents after each session, so there’s nothing you need to do.

Families are able to book care 7 days a week from 7 am to 1 am local time, but occasionally, we’ll get requests outside of these hours. Our minimum booking time is 2 hours and parents can book as much time as they need.

You are responsible for managing your own transportation to and from care. We ask that you factor transportation into your decision prior to accepting a booking. Note: Otter sitters are not permitted to provide transportation for children during care.

Each care request will include the area where you’d be providing care. This is typically at a family’s home, but occasionally there may be a request to care for children at a public location, such as a park or a library. Sitters cannot care for children in their private living areas or homes, including dorms. Otter sitters can only care for one family at a time.

Otter goes the extra mile to set parents, sitters, and kids up for success!

1. Plan for your upcoming care session!

Once confirmed, plan your route and travel time so you can arrive on time. You are responsible for managing your own transportation. If you need to cancel a care session due to an emergency or illness, please text us ASAP. Multiple late arrivals or cancellations can lead to fewer care requests.

2. Communication is key!

Once connected via 3-way text, say hello and introduce yourself! Review the Sitter Manual and ask any questions you have. Remember - being readily responsive to parents helps you build trust together! Keep all communications in the text thread with Otter.

3. Be an excellent sitter!

Strive to create a positive and memorable care experience every time. Always give children your full attention and engage in age-appropriate play and activities with children they enjoy. Follow each child’s routine so they know what to expect and parents feel confident during care.

4. Focus on kids, not your phone!

Only use your devices during a care session to communicate with parents and Otter, and for emergencies. Do not take any photos or videos of children unless directly requested by the parent. Always ask about a family’s screen time preferences for their children before turning on TV or any other electronic device for the kids.

5. Before you leave…

Clean up after younger kids and help older kids pick up any toys and kid messes. Please leave a family’s home at least as tidy as when you arrived. Share how the session went and any positive or important details they may like to know. A care session ends once another caregiver is there to take care of the kid(s). Please update the text thread if care starts or ends late.

6. Be prepared!

If there is an emergency, always call 911 and follow their instructions. If there is an accident, injury, and/or illness, please contact the parent immediately! Check the “emergency contacts” in the Sitter Manual if the parent is unavailable. Never administer any medication without prior written parental consent and/or if instructed by a medical professional.

Choosing to book with a family off the Otter platform is against our policy and will result in removal from our platform. Please ask parents to reach out to Otter directly and they can request  to book with you. We’re happy to support this kind of request!

Booking through Otter benefits you too! It ensures that you can work for as many families as you’d like, when you’d like. Since Otter manages all logistics and payments, it means you are protected against last minute cancellations and always paid the agreed upon rate, on time.

At Otter, it’s important everyone stays healthy and safe. If you (or people who live with you) are experiencing an illness that could be contagious, please let us know so we can help you determine the best course of action. Transparency and communication are important for families to build trust.

If you have experienced any of these contagious illness symptoms in the past 24 hours, please contact Otter to cancel your care session:

• Vomiting or diarrhea
• A fever over 99 degrees
• Heavy nasal discharge
• Red-eye with discharge
• Persistent cough
• Head lice
• A communicable disease, e.g. COVID, flu, mumps, chicken pox, monkeypox, RSV, strep, hepatitis, pneumonia, measles, rubella, scarlet fever, scabies, pertussis, encephalitis, or meningitis.
• If you have been knowingly exposed or recently tested positive for COVID, we ask that you please have a negative test before attending a care session.

If you’re unsure if these symptoms apply to you, please reach out to Otter Support.

Your first opportunity to build trust with parents is when they view your profile. A friendly, clear, and recent photo of you helps them feel connected to the person who will care for their children. When parents feel safe and confident, they are more likely to confirm care sessions with new sitters, so a great profile photo = more confirmed care sessions! In the future, you may be added to their family’s Care Team, where you’ll be prioritized for their bookings. 

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 Here are a few ideas on how to best highlight yourself in your profile photo: 

- Your photo is clear, recent, and without filters -you’ll be easily recognizable when you meet a family for the first time. 

- Present yourself professionally and positively by choosing an appropriate background location (somewhere well-lit and without distractions) and attire. 

- Be forward-facing and close enough to see your facial features (smile, if you like!). No hats, sunglasses, or masks, so you’re visible. Face coverings for cultural and religious purposes are always allowed. 

- Only you should be present - please, no other adults or children. 

- Be family-friendly and follow Sitter Community Standards.