Why I Co-Founded Nannovo: Backup Childcare Working Parents Can Trust

After more than 28 years working with children, families, and working parents, I've learnt that the biggest challenges rarely happen when everything goes to plan. They happen on the mornings when it all falls apart - when the nanny wakes up unwell or the nursery sends a child home sick, with a week off to follow. A child spikes a temperature an hour before an important meeting, and suddenly, a parent who is brilliant at their job is forced to choose between their work and their child.

I've watched this happen to families for years. It's part of what inspired me to co-found Nannovo, a new venture alongside Homebodies that helps employers support working parents through trusted backup childcare. In this blog post, I want to share why I felt so strongly that this gap needed filling, and what I hope it will mean for the families and professionals I work with.

What is Nannovo?

Nannovo is an employer-backed childcare and family care service. Companies partner with us to provide their employees with reliable backup childcare for exactly those moments when regular arrangements break down, whether that's a sick child, a nursery closure, a school inset day, or planned holiday cover.

I co-founded the company with James McCrossen, who runs the nanny agency Manny and Me. Between us, we bring decades of experience in childcare and family support, and we built Nannovo around a principle we both believe in deeply: parents will only ever use a backup care service they genuinely trust.

Homebodies continues exactly as it always has, placing exceptional nannies and maternity nurses with families. Nannovo simply extends that same care and the same standards into the workplace.

Why did I decide to set up Nannovo?

Working so closely with professional families over the years has given me a front-row seat to something that doesn't get talked about enough. Balancing a demanding career with raising a family is hard at the best of times. When childcare falls through, it becomes almost impossible.

I see the same situation play out again and again: a parent, often a mum, is doing everything right, thriving at work and at home, until one unexpected childcare gap throws the whole week into chaos. And because so many of the families I work with have no family living nearby, there's rarely anyone to call on in a crisis.

This isn't only a family problem. The CIPD's 2025 Health and Wellbeing at Work report found that caring responsibilities for children are among the leading causes of short-term absence in UK workplaces, sitting alongside stress at 26%. Those figures reflect exactly what I've seen play out for years, particularly for mothers, who so often end up being the ones to step back when care falls through.

The cost of that lands on businesses too, through absenteeism, lost productivity, and experienced people quietly reconsidering their careers. It's a problem nobody has been properly solving, and once I saw the scale of it, I couldn't unsee it. Nannovo grew directly out of that realisation.

What's the gap in the market Nannovo fills?

There are backup childcare services out there already. What I found, though, was that most of them prioritise scale over quality. They work like a database or an app, sending whoever happens to be available, with very little personal knowledge of who that person actually is.

And here's the problem with that approach: when it comes to your child, availability isn't enough. No parent wants to open their front door to a complete stranger they know nothing about, however urgent the situation. So what tends to happen is that these benefits go unused. Parents don't trust them, so they don't book them, and the company investment is often wasted.

In our experience, a backup childcare benefit is only worth anything if parents actually feel able to use it. And they'll only use it if they trust the person they are calling in to help. That trust has to come first - everything else follows from it.

That's the gap Nannovo fills. We don't work from an anonymous database - we build a carefully selected network of experienced, vetted childcare professionals we know personally, and we stand behind every single one.

How does Nannovo support both families and employers?

This is the part I find most rewarding, because it genuinely helps everyone involved.

For parents, it means having dependable, high-quality care ready when they need it most, arranged without panic. It removes that awful feeling of being caught between your responsibilities at work and your child at home.

For employers, supporting working parents in this practical way brings real benefits. It reduces absenteeism, protects productivity, and helps companies retain experienced people who might otherwise struggle to balance work and family. In an increasingly competitive hiring market, it also signals a genuine commitment to working families, which matters enormously for attracting and keeping talent.

And there's a knock-on effect I care about deeply: reliable care support helps level the playing field. So often, when childcare falls through, it's mothers who step back, take the leave, or turn down the promotion. Better support helps protect women's career progression, which is something I feel passionately about.

Does Nannovo only help with childcare?

Not at all, and this is something I'm particularly proud of. Through our Care Credit model, employers can also support staff with the cost of their own elder care and pet care. Rather than us arranging that care, the employee organises it themselves and is reimbursed for a set amount, which means the support reaches everyone, including employees who don't have children.

It's a way of recognising that the pressures of modern working life extend well beyond young children. So many people today find themselves in the "sandwich generation", raising children while also caring for ageing parents, all while holding down demanding jobs. It's an enormous amount to carry, and it's rarely acknowledged by employers. Extending our support to elder care felt like a natural and necessary step.

We've also built a concierge service that connects employees to a trusted network of specialists, from private midwives and sleep experts to tutors and relocation experts. These are all people we know personally and would happily recommend, because the same principle of trust runs through everything we do.

What about parents returning to work after maternity leave?

Alongside our backup childcare, we've built a part of Nannovo called Returnity, designed to support parents at another pressure point: the return to work after maternity leave. It's aimed particularly at career mums making that transition.

One challenge that comes up again and again in this area is around how to manage Keeping in Touch (KIT) days. Before officially returning, an employee often needs to attend meetings or reconnect with their team, yet their childcare usually doesn't start until they're formally back, so their nursery place or permanent nanny isn't in place yet.

That leaves a very practical problem: who looks after the baby on those days? Through Returnity, the employer can fund a trusted Nannovo nanny to step in, so the employee can attend knowing their child is in safe, experienced hands.

For employers, the real value here is retention. Companies invest in their people over many years, and practical support at such a pivotal moment helps valued employees feel looked after and makes their return far smoother. I think of Returnity as the natural partner to our backup childcare: one supports parents when their arrangements break down, the other supports them through the return to work itself.

What does this mean for Homebodies families?

If you're a Homebodies family, nothing changes about the personal, bespoke service you know. I'll continue to match families with exceptional full-time nannies and maternity and night nannies exactly as I always have.

What Nannovo represents is a broadening of my mission rather than a shift away from it. Whether I'm helping a family find the perfect nanny, or working with an employer to support their working parents, my goal is exactly the same as it's always been: giving parents complete confidence in the people caring for those who matter most.

If your own employer doesn't yet offer this kind of support, I'd be happy to start a conversation with your HR or benefits team. Backup childcare is fast becoming one of the most valued benefits a company can offer, and many working parents tell me they only wish they'd had it sooner.

Backup childcare that working parents can trust

Building Nannovo alongside James over the past year has reminded me why I started in this industry in the first place. It all comes back to care, and to the belief that when families feel genuinely supported, everything else in their lives works better too.

I'm enormously excited about what's ahead, and about helping create workplaces where parents feel valued, supported, and able to perform at their best without sacrificing their family life in the process.

If you'd like to find out more about Nannovo and how it supports employers and working parents, I'd love for you to get in touch. And if you're looking for an exceptional nanny or maternity nurse for your own family, Homebodies is here, just as always, ready to help.