'Childcare' crisis in the market: High demand for Filipino nannies

Due to the intensity of parents' working lives, the need for child caregivers is increasing every day. According to a report by Çiğdem Yılmaz from Milliyet, while this task often falls to grandparents in extended families, nuclear families entrust their children to nannies.

In Turkey, nannies from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Philippines are preferred for childcare. Finding a nanny does not end the problem. Either families experience dissatisfaction in a short time and terminate the nanny's employment, or the nannies flee due to the mistreatment they receive.

Olcay Nazlı Karakuş, owner of a Filipino nanny agency, also shared the following:

DEMAND FOR FILIPINO NANNIES

“There is a high demand for nannies in Turkey, and especially an incredible demand for Filipino nannies. If we had 200 Filipino nannies a day, we would place all 200 of them within the same day. They are at the top of families' preference lists. The most important reason is that they speak English, and in addition to that, they are disciplined and work for long periods. No one wants to work with a new nanny constantly so that their children's psychology is not affected. As a company, we receive over 500 calls a day, but we cannot keep up. They work for between 1,200 and 1,800 dollars. There was a nanny I sent to Denizli who was working for 1,200 dollars; when she wanted to leave, her salary was raised to 2,200 dollars just so she wouldn't go. Food and board are also provided by the family.”

Sultan Tuğruları, who lives in Istanbul, also searched for months for a suitable nanny for her 1.5-year-old baby and found one. However, after months, she parted ways with the nanny she found because they could not reach an agreement.

'I QUIT MY JOB AND STARTED TAKING CARE OF MY CHILD MYSELF'

Although she started looking for a new nanny, she could not find one and quit her job to take care of her child herself. Mother Tuğruları said, “The first nanny I found also had a child; despite this, I accepted that she would look after my child, but her child was also 4 years old and started to harm my baby. You can't say anything to that child either, so I stopped working with her, but I couldn't find another nanny, and I was forced to quit my job and start taking care of my child myself.”

H.A., who lives in Bursa and says she has been a nanny for many years, says families are troubled:

“I started working as a nanny for many families, but even though they tell you at the beginning, ‘You will only be concerned with the care of the child,’ they later expect you to do the housework as well. Demands like cooking, ironing, and cleaning never end. However, there was no such thing when I started the job, and because you are in need, you can't say anything. I started my last job to look after a baby, and they expected me to do housework in the same way, and there was no change in the fee, so I left.”

'THE PHONE NEVER LEAVES HER HAND'

Özlem Evgin, who lives in Istanbul, stated that she was looking for a reliable nanny but was struggling, and said the following:

“There is a nanny agency, and a nanny was sent through them. The woman who came was from Turkmenistan, and the only thing we wanted her to do was to take care of our child, but she didn't even do that. She did nothing other than putting the child to sleep and feeding them, and the phone never left her hand. There is no game or conversation with the child. They have the mindset of ‘Let me feed them quickly and lie down.’ When that happened, we had to let her go and started looking for a new nanny for our daughter.”

HOW MUCH SALARY DO THEY EARN

Turkish nanny: Varies between 17 thousand TL and 40 thousand TL per month.

Turkmenistan nanny: Varies between 35 thousand TL and 60 thousand TL per month.

Filipino nannies: Varies between 1,200 and 2,200 dollars per month.