Today’s families are stretched thin for care of children school-age and younger between heavy workloads, single parenting in many cases, elder caregiving, and children’s out-of-school activities. Extended family members often live too far away to be daily caregivers after school, evenings, weekends or in the summer. Younger children are not able to responsibly take care of themselves alone at home. Qualified short-term adult caregivers for younger children are often hard to find in the community. Middle-school and high school youth who are too young to find employment in the commercial sector are eager to earn money for personal wants and needs. They are willing to be trained as short-term child care providers, commonly known as babysitters.

The Edmonson County Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent offered the KY 4-H Babysitter 4 Fun & 4 Profit Program to Edmonson County youth ages 12 and older. The eight hours of education included lecture and hands on activities. Topics covered were safety, health, basic nutrition, child development/discipline and business practices. The classes were taught over the course of two days at the Edmonson County Extension Office in May of 2019 This gave youth the opportunity to secure summer babysitting jobs.  Before the class youth complete a pretest and a self assessment. Youth completed a post test and self assessment at the end of the program. Eight youth completed eight hours of education. 

The average score for the pretest was 73%. The post test score was 100% indicating youth gained knowledge related to babysitting. 100% of youth reported that they could better communicate in front of a group and felt more comfortable caring for infants and preschoolers.  One youth indicated that they had worked five babysitting jobs resulted in an income of $120. Another youth indicated they had worked three babysitting jobs resulting in an income of $70