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She has taught child health and development at Cuyahoga Community College for several years and has trained teachers in child care centers. Bassett continues to make presentations to academic, professional and community groups, and is involved in the development of professional standards and recognition for child care practitioners, including nannies. In April 1999, Bassett was recognized by the Cleveland chapter of the National Association for the Education of Young Children as the Teacher of the Year of Early Childhood Teachers. "It was so kind," noted Bassett. "So many people have labored in the field for so long, and it was gratifying to be recognized for my work in training nannies as well as the mainstream training of early childhood teachers."
Bassett, a long-time Lakewood resident, was "bitten by the entrepreneurial bug" in the early '80s, just as the concept of nannies began to surface among American parents. When she inventoried her skills, she felt that the combination of her nursing specialization in maternal-infant health and her teaching experience pointed her toward establishing a school for training nannies.
And so, Nannies of Cleveland was born. At that time, the mid-eighties, professional nanny training in the United States consisted of a few small, private, entrepreneurial endeavours scattered across the country, yet the demand for nannies was high. "Even before I started the school," Bassett remembers, "I started getting calls from parents.& It was easy to encourage interest among potential students. The jobs were there."
Bassett felt that Lakewood was an ideal location for a nanny school. For students coming from small towns, it had the advantages of a big city, while remaining safe, compact and easy to navigate. It also offered (and still offers) many practical resources for those learning child-care skills. Nannies of Cleveland students could observe story time at the Lakewood Public Library, learn about water safety from certified instructors at the YMCA, and be placed in a practicum in the pediatrics department at Lakewood Hospital or in one of Lakewood's many preschools and daycare centers.
At the same time, the profession was beginning to take off nationally. The first International Nanny Conference was held at Scripps College in Claremont, California in 1986, and featured Louise Davis, of the renowned Norland College, the pre-eminent Nursery Nursing training college in the United Kingdom. The International Nanny Association was born out of that conference, and Bassett remembers spending the winter of 1986-87 crafting the organization's by-laws in consultation with her attorney husband, Ben Bassett.
Bassett keeps in touch with her former students, many of whom are still active in the profession. She knows one nanny who has remained with a Lakewood family for 12 years. The duties have changed, of course, as the children have grown--from diapers to preschool to soccer practice. It's hard to gather statistics on nannying as a profession, Bassett notes, because it is based in private homes. Candidates are drawn to the work not just through a love for children, but for the opportunity to travel, to live in a new place, and to experience different people. It does tend to attract young people, but Bassett cites Harriette Grant, co-president of the National Association of Nannies, who began her career over 25 years ago, well in advance of the current American nanny movement.
Nannies may leave the profession because of life changes of their own, such as attending college, getting married, or starting their own families. The availability of live-out, as well as live-in positions, however, allows nannies to combine marriage or college with nanny employment, and this is not uncommon.
Bassett's vision for the nanny profession has evolved over the years. Originally she had hoped to develop a curriculum like the rigorous two-year British Nursery Nurse training. The program at Nannies of Cleveland started out nine weeks long, then grew to six months. The six-month program was approved for transfer credit at both Cuyahoga Community College and Lorain County Community College, uniquely among nanny-training programs in the U.S. at the time. It was through this partnership that Bassett realized that the future of nanny-training in the U.S. belongs in college as part of the mainstream early childhood education curriculum. Bassett closed Nannies of Cleveland in 1992, and directed her efforts towards advocacy for higher educational standards in the field of early childhood education. Bassett makes a comparison with cosmetology. In order to be a practicing cosmetologist in the state of Ohio, one must take a minimum number of instructional hours and sit for state board examinations. No such criteria exist for those taking care of small children in either home or institutional settings. Head Start, the federally-funded early childhood program, now requires its lead teachers to have at least an Associate's Degree, a development that Bassett reads as a hopeful sign.
"The problem is that the period of parental involvement is relatively short, " noted Bassett. "They're the ones who should get all fired up about standards, but it's only a concern for about five years. Until we are able to say that we all benefit from high standards for the education of zero to five year olds, public money is not going to flow to child care."
Bassett considers herself retired from the direct training of nannies and other early childhood care-providers, but she remains active in the profession. In September 1998, the National Association of Nannies' (NAN) annual conference was in Cleveland, and Bassett was the keynote speaker. The thrust of her talk was again the need for standards in the profession, and she continues to press for the development of Associate degree programs for professional nannies in community and junior colleges across North America. (Click here for the 1999 NAN Conference page.)
Attending all those nannying conferences also launched her career as an author. While chatting with an editor from Delmar Publishers at such a conference, Bassett talked about the need for textbooks in nanny education. Suddenly, she was asked to develop a proposal, and she soon had a contract.
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"Nothing had been written about basic care given by someone other than the parent," says Bassett, describing the impetus for her first book, Infant and Child Care Skills. The book provides the routine information that health-care professionals share with parents at well-child visits, presented from the perspective of the caregiver. |
| Her second book, The Professional Nanny, came out in 1998. It begins with a history of the profession, then addresses the practical issues of building a career as a nanny, such as employer-employee relationships, tax and retirement planning, career paths, as well as offering exhaustive resources and bibliographies. "The blur between work and off-duty can become very vague," notes Bassett, "and nannies need to be trained to negotiate with a family on an employer/employee basis. It has to get off to a good business start--that's the only way it can flower into a good, warm, positive relationship." Both books have been well-reviewed in the professional nanny press, such as INAVision, Nanny News, and the National Association of Nannies Newsletter. |  |