For candidates
Your first placement
From the placement letter to the ninety-day call: what to expect, what to sign, and who to call.
Your placement letter
When a household offers you a position and you accept, we send you a placement letter. It confirms the household’s account number and neighborhood, your role, your start date, your pay and hours, and whether you live in. It encloses your employment agreement and your confidentiality agreement, which you sign with the household, and the Residence Code, which you sign with us.
Since April 2024 your placement letter has also carried your Register number and a first passphrase, with which you sign in to the Register from the link at the top of every page of this site. A specimen letter, with the personal details removed, is below.
- Specimen placement letter A placement letter of 2024, with the member of staff’s personal details and the household’s removed.
Your first week
The house manager, or the principal where there is none, will walk you through the house on your first morning, give you your keys and codes, and tell you the household’s own rules. Write them down in the household’s day book, not on your telephone. If the household holds staff telephones during duty hours, the house manager will take yours at the start of each day and give you a number your family can call.
The Register
The Register holds your placement letter, your agreements, the hours you record outside your agreed hours, and notices from the office. Please change your first passphrase when you first sign in. If you forget it, the office will issue a new one during office hours, and if you live in, your house manager holds a sealed copy of your first one.
Thirty and ninety days
Your consultant will call you at thirty days and at ninety, separately from the household. Tell them the truth. Most of what goes wrong in a placement can be put right in its first three months, and we can only put right what we know about.
If you need us
During the day, call your consultant. At any other hour, call the duty line, (206) 014-6182. If you ever feel you must leave a placement without notice, call us first, and tell us where you are.