The short answer
Yes, and it needs its own route on the website with the surcharge stated on it. Short-notice requests are a large share of babysitting demand, not an exception to be handled by whoever happens to answer the phone.
So: a labelled last-minute path, a stated window, a stated surcharge, a stated response time, and a way to reach a human when the parent has two hours rather than two days.
Why it deserves a page of its own
The standard booking flow assumes you have time to match a sitter. It is built with a notice period so it only offers dates you can staff. That is correct, and it means everything inside the window falls off the end of it.
Where there is no designed route, the parent either sees no availability and leaves, or books a slot you cannot fill and finds out at six o'clock. Both are worse outcomes than a page that says: here is what we can do tonight, here is what it costs, here is how fast we will answer.
The parent whose arrangement has just collapsed is also the least price-sensitive customer you will get all month. They are not comparing. They need someone. Meeting them properly is the most valuable thing on the site.
What the last-minute page has to say
The window. What counts as short notice. Inside forty-eight hours, inside twenty-four, or same day. Say which, in hours.
The surcharge. The amount or the uplift, plainly. A surcharge with a stated trigger reads as a price. A surcharge that appears at the end reads as opportunism, and it is the fastest way to lose a family permanently.
The response time. The one number that matters more than any other here. Fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, and whether that applies overnight. A parent who knows an answer is coming in twenty minutes will wait. One who knows nothing will call three other services while yours is still deciding.
How to reach you. A tappable phone number, and whether text or WhatsApp is faster. Do not make someone with ninety minutes to spare fill in a form designed for a Saturday two weeks out.
Your honest hit rate. If you can usually cover same-day weeknights but rarely a Friday, say so. Managing the expectation costs you nothing and stops you being blamed for a no you were always going to give.
Build a shorter form for it
If you do take short-notice requests through a form, it should not be the standard one.
Ask for the minimum that lets you start matching: mobile, postcode, tonight's start and finish, number and ages of children. Nothing else. Everything about routines, allergies and access can follow by text once a sitter is confirmed, because at this point speed is the entire product.
Make the submission fire an alert that actually reaches a person, on their phone, not an email that sits in an inbox until Monday.
Set the notice period in the platform properly
The standard flow needs a minimum notice period configured in the booking system, and the last-minute route needs to sit outside it. Wire the two together so a parent who cannot find a slot in the normal flow is offered the last-minute path rather than an empty calendar and a dead end.
Whether your platform can present that automatically depends on the product, so confirm it with the vendor and build the manual fallback in the meantime: a visible link under the calendar saying what to do if nothing shows.
Do not compromise the vetting to be fast
This is the part that matters most. Speed is the promise, but it never comes out of the checks.
Every sitter sent at short notice goes through exactly the same process as every other sitter: the same background check, the same references, the same first aid, the same induction. A last-minute route is a faster way to reach the roster you already vetted. It is not a faster way onto the roster.
Say that on the page, in one sentence. Parents booking in a hurry are the most anxious ones, and reading that the standard did not move is what lets them say yes.
Follow up afterwards
A short-notice booking is how a lot of long-term families start. Send the same follow-up you would send anyone else: the sitter's first name, the confirmation, the terms, and afterwards an invitation to book ahead.
Where you send anything promotional, keep the consent separate from the booking messages and put an unsubscribe route in every send.
Where this sits
A labelled short-notice route, a stated surcharge, a stated response time and a fast form are part of a babysitting service website as we build it, and the same handling of urgent enquiries runs through our other childcare and family websites. Packages are on pricing. The panicked parent on a Thursday is not a nuisance. They are the booking.