Interview with Angela Schmidt from the Emergency Moms

Angela Schmidt from Hamburg, herself a mother of a 4-year-old daughter, provides trained, child-friendly emergency caregivers available within 2 hours for parents with the Notfallmamas service.

How exactly does emergency care work? Is it also available "overnight"?

Angela Schmidt: If an employee notices that their child is getting sick or there is another urgent situation, they can send us an email or a text message by 10 PM, and we will immediately begin organizing emergency care for the next day.

So that can happen almost overnight, I check in the next morning between 7 and 8 am when I retrieve my messages. And we almost always manage to have an emergency caregiver on-site with the family within 2 hours.

How are your emergency caregivers trained? Does it also work interpersonally?

In addition to an extended police clearance certificate and a course in child first aid, all my employees have a qualified education, such as a childminder, educator, pediatric nurse, or a lot of experience. They range in age from their mid-20s to late 60s and engage with the children so empathetically that there have never been any difficulties with an emergency care arranged by us.

How are important practical matters like a contract, directions, and the child's medical care arranged?

We do this in the HH area, Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin, and have a wide network; you can also take a look at our staff on our homepage. When one of our emergency moms comes to a family, she brings a care contract with her, which you can also view in advance on the intranet. It stipulates how long she will stay, who the pediatrician is, and how to contact the parents in an emergency. And of course, parents can call home at any time to check how the child is doing. The contract also states that the emergency mom is covered by liability insurance.

What does it cost the employees of the partner companies?

At some companies, each employee pays a deductible of, for example, 10 € per day, while at others the service is completely free; companies handle this differently. The deductible is deliberately set very low but is economical for the employer. An employee who is absent due to a sick child is simply more expensive.

Can you guarantee that your employees will take good and reliable care of the child entrusted to them?

I personally selected all our emergency caregivers. Ultimately, as an entrepreneur and mother, I stand here and ask myself: "Would I trust this person with my own daughter?

Does the care also come to the house for several days?

If the child is sick for more than one day, the emergency mom will stay as long as the family needs her. That usually works out. What we obviously can't guarantee is that exactly the same emergency mom will come back in the next emergency. But they are all nice!

Don't sick children especially need their own parents? Do the children even accept unfamiliar caregivers when they are ill?

Whether a family decides to use emergency childcare or prefers to take care of the child themselves depends entirely on the family, primarily on the respective child. Our caregivers also clean up vomit and take care of the children like a real mother, and most children are very easy to care for as long as they are cared for at home.

I tried this with my own daughter last December. I'll say it openly: she's not an easy child when it comes to separations. But when our emergency nanny showed up with her big toy bag, she was almost inside the bag, and I could leave the house without any issues. It worked perfectly.

How well is your offer of emergency moms being received?

Initially, parents may be somewhat hesitant to try our emergency care, but word quickly gets around that it works well. We notice this through word of mouth among freelancers who also book us, such as lawyers and psychologists.

Photo: Christian Kerber