What we are building
One page that sets out, stage by stage, what happens to a candidate between registering with you and being sent to a family. Not a paragraph of reassurance. A numbered process with named checks, in your own words, that a parent can read in two minutes and compare against the marketplace app they were about to use instead.
This is the page that justifies your fee. A family can find a nanny on a listings site for nothing. They pay an agency because someone competent did the checking. Here is the build order. It takes a morning, most of it writing rather than building.
1. Write down what you actually do
Open three recent candidate files and list every step you took, in order, with who did it. Identity documents seen, references taken and how, interview format, certificates sighted, checks applied for, anything you turned a candidate away for.
Write the real process. A vetting page describing a process you do not run is the worst thing on a childcare website, because a family will rely on it.
2. Name the stages in the order they happen
Registration and screening, identity and right to work, criminal record checks, references, qualifications and training, interview, ongoing renewal. Seven headings. A parent skims headings and stops at the one that worries them. Numbering matters more than prose here: it reads as a system rather than a promise.
3. Identity and right to work
Say what documents you see, whether originals or verified digital copies, and whether you keep a copy. Say plainly who is responsible for the right to work check, because in most nanny placements the family is the employer and the duty sits with them. If you support that check, say so; if you do not, say that too.
4. Criminal record checks, named correctly
This is where accuracy matters most, and the naming differs by country. In the UK it is a DBS certificate at the level appropriate for work with children, and whether you require one dated within a set period or registration with the update service. In the US it is state and federal background checking, sex offender registry searches and driving records, all of which vary by state. In Canada it is a police check including vulnerable sector screening. In Australia it is a Working with Children Check, issued and numbered by the state.
Say which you require, who pays, who sees the certificate and how recent it must be. Do not let "fully police checked" stand in for naming the actual check. And note what most agency pages skip: a check describes the day it was issued, which is why the renewal section exists.
5. References, with the method stated
Families assume every agency takes references, so the differentiator is method. How many, how far back, whether you speak to referees by phone rather than accepting a written letter, whether you require childcare referees rather than friends, and what you do about gaps in a work history.
Say what happens when a reference does not check out. An agency that declines candidates is more credible than one that only describes success.
6. Qualifications, training and first aid
List what you verify: childcare qualifications, paediatric first aid and its expiry, safeguarding training, driving licence, swimming, special educational needs experience. Say that you sight certificates rather than take a CV at its word, and say how you track the ones that expire. That sentence separates an agency with a system from one with a filing cabinet.
7. Interview and safer recruitment
Describe the interview honestly: who runs it, how long, in person or by video, and what you probe. Employment gaps, reasons for leaving, scenario questions about safeguarding, lone working and a child's injury. If you follow a structured safer recruitment approach, say what it means in practice rather than naming it and moving on.
8. Say what you do not do
The strongest paragraph on any vetting page. You introduce; the family interviews, decides and employs. You cannot guarantee anyone's future conduct. You recommend the family meet the candidate at home, involve the child, have their own reference conversation and set a trial period. That paragraph protects you and raises trust at the same time.
9. Renewal and ongoing checks
What you require at re-registration, how often you refresh checks, when first aid must be renewed, and what happens if a candidate goes quiet for a year. Say whether someone on your books for three years has been rechecked, because the family is quietly wondering.
10. Build it as records, not as a slab of text
In the CMS, a vetting stage is a record: number, name, one-line summary, detail and who carries it out. The page renders them in order, so changing a check means editing one field.
Put a short version, five or six lines, on the family route's landing page, linking through to the full page. Close the full page with the family enquiry form, because a parent who has just read your process is at the point of wanting to talk to you.
What not to do
No trust badges you cannot substantiate. No certificate scans or candidate documents anywhere on the public site. No accreditation you do not hold. Keep safeguarding language accurate rather than pinned to a regime you are not sure applies where you operate: treat this as orientation and take local advice.
Where this sits
A vetting page written as ordered records, a short version on the family route, and an enquiry form at the end of it are part of every nanny agency website we build, and the same trust pattern runs through our other childcare websites. The packages that include it are on pricing. Show the process and the fee explains itself.