The code of conduct
The Isla-Grace Standard
The code of conduct every caregiver trained here commits to.
Why this is published
There is no accrediting body for nannies in Canada and no protected title. Anyone can call themselves certified, and there is no way for a family to check what that certification actually means.
So we have published ours. This is the whole of it. It is what a caregiver agrees to when she completes the Attachment-Based Care Certification, and it is what you are entitled to expect from her.
If a caregiver tells you she is trained here, this is the document to hold her to.
How to read it
There are three kinds of line, and they work differently
Never done
Some things are simply not done to a child. They do not become acceptable because a parent asks. A caregiver who does them has failed at something more fundamental than approach.
Published safety standards
Some things have a published safety standard, and she works to it while a child is her responsibility. She is not the authority on those, and that is the point. She is not deciding a family is wrong. She is following guidance that exists whether or not she agrees with it, the way a driver follows a speed limit.
Yours to decide
And some things are ordinary parenting decisions that belong to the parents. Good families make them every day. This approach does not use them, and a caregiver trained here is not the person who carries them out.
That last distinction matters, and we want to be plain about it. It is not a verdict on your family. It is the honest limit of what she was trained and hired to do.
Part one
What is never done
These hold regardless of who asks.
She does not use physical punishment.
Ever, in any form, for any reason. No spanking, no rough handling, no gripping or shaking, no forcing a body into position as a consequence.
She does not shame a child.
No mocking, no humiliation, no comparison to other children, no using a child's distress or accident or fear as a story. She speaks to a child rather than about them in front of them.
She does not conceal.
Not an injury, not an incident, not a mistake, not a moment she handled badly. Parents are told what actually happened, on the day it happened. A caregiver who hides one thing has made everything else she says unverifiable.
She does not leave a child unsupervised.
Not asleep in a vehicle, not alone in the home, not with somebody the parents have not agreed to. Sleeping children are still supervised children.
She does not work impaired.
No alcohol, no cannabis, no substance and no medication that affects her judgement or her ability to respond, at any point during her hours.
She does not sleep while a child is her responsibility.
Contact naps with an awake, alert caregiver are welcome and encouraged, and the difference is not a technicality. A baby asleep on the chest of an awake adult is in one of the safest and oldest positions there is. What this prevents is an adult who has fallen asleep and no longer knows the baby is there, from whom he can slip and become wedged.
She does not share your child.
No photographs or video posted anywhere, no naming your family, no discussion of your private life. During the placement and after it ends.
One thing that overrides everything in this document. Where a caregiver has reasonable grounds to suspect a child is being harmed or neglected, she has a legal duty to report it, and nothing in this code and no confidentiality agreement releases her from that.
Part two
The safety standards she works to
These are not our opinions, and she is taught never to present them as her own judgement. They are published safety guidance, and while your child is in her care she works to them.
Nothing goes around a child's neck.
No teething jewellery of any material, no cords, ribbons or chains, no pacifier clip worn as a necklace, no drawstring hood.
Health Canada's guidance is never to place a necklace, teething necklace, string, ribbon or chain around the neck of a child under three, because of strangulation and choking risk. The Canadian Paediatric Society extends the caution on beaded necklaces to age four. The usual objection is that amber necklaces have breakaway clasps; a 2018 Nova Scotia study tested fifteen of them and eight did not open under 1.6 pounds of force, roughly the force needed to block a young child's airway.
Babies sleep on their backs, on a firm flat surface, with nothing else in the space, for the whole first year.
No loose blankets, pillows, soft toys, loveys, positioners or wedges.
That rule is about where a baby is put down. A baby asleep on the chest of an awake, upright adult is being held rather than placed on a surface, and contact naps are welcome here. What makes them safe is the condition attached: the adult stays awake and upright, never on a sofa or an armchair, and never while dozing. When he is put down, he goes on his back, on a firm flat surface, with nothing else in the space.
No sleeping in a car seat, swing or bouncer indoors.
The head position can compromise the airway. A baby who falls asleep in the car comes out of the seat when he comes into the house.
Swaddling stops at the first sign of rolling.
And a swaddled baby is always placed on his back.
She does not install or adjust car seats.
If something looks wrong she will say so, and the family has it checked by somebody certified to do it.
These are Canadian standards. A caregiver working elsewhere is taught to find and work to the published guidance where she is, and to do that before she needs it.
Part three
What she does not do
One principle rather than a list, because lists invite arguments about whether a particular technique counts.
She does not use separation, or the withdrawal of connection, as a tool to change a child's behaviour or his sleep.
In practice that covers controlled crying, extinction, timed check-ins, leaving a child to fall asleep alone in distress, time-outs alone, the naughty step, deliberate ignoring, closing or holding a bedroom door shut, and withdrawing warmth or affection as a consequence.
Why, as mechanism rather than belief. Everything she has been trained in rests on a child borrowing regulation from the adult who is present. Removing the adult removes the thing he needs in order to do what is being asked of him.
What this means for your family, said plainly. This is not a position about how you should parent. If you use time-outs, or you have sleep trained, or you intend to, that is your decision about your child. She has been taught not to argue with it, not to undermine it, not to quietly do something different, and not to make you feel judged.
And it does not ask you to change your nights. Her limit is about what she does during her hours. A family who does one thing at bedtime and has a caregiver who settles naps in arms is not running a contradiction. Naps and nights run on different biology, with different people, at different times of day, and a child has always had different people doing things differently.
If you ask her to do something in this category, she has been taught to tell you once, kindly and early, that it is not something she can be the one to do, to offer what she can do instead, and to leave the decision with you. She declines on the grounds of what she does, not on the grounds that you are wrong.
The rest of it
What she also commits to
Beyond the three lists, a caregiver trained here has agreed to work this way.
She goes to a child who is crying.
She holds your limits, sets her own, and invents none.
Your bedtime, your rules, your routines, held as though they were hers. She is entitled to her own limits about how she is treated. She does not introduce new household rules because she thinks they would be better.
She raises disagreement with you rather than around you.
And then leaves the decision where it belongs.
She tells you the truth about the day, including the parts that went badly.
The nap she lost, the moment she was short with him, the fall, the thing she handled clumsily. A caregiver who only reports good days has made all her reports worthless.
She describes what she sees and does not name conditions.
She will tell you what she observed, when, and how often. She will not tell you your child has reflux, an allergy, a tongue tie or anything else with a name on it, because those are diagnoses and they are not hers to make.
The limits
What this certification does not mean
- It is not a qualification to work with children. It is an approach, taken by somebody already doing this work.
- It does not teach first aid or CPR, and it cannot. Choking response is a hands-on skill and has to be taught with somebody's hands. Every caregiver should hold a current paediatric first aid and CPR certificate, and every family should ask to see it and check the date.
- It does not qualify anyone to diagnose anything, in a child or an adult.
- It is not a background check, a reference check, or a verification of anyone's experience or right to work. Those are the family's responsibility, or an agency's, and completing this course says nothing about any of them.
- And it is not accredited by anyone. It is our own standard, and it carries Lauren Weber's name.
What this document is for
A commitment she makes, not something we police
It is a commitment she makes, in writing, on completing the certification. It is not something we police.
We want to be straight about that, because a code of conduct that implies enforcement it does not have is worth less than one that does not pretend.
We are not in your home. We cannot see what happens during your day, we have no way to verify what any caregiver does, and we would not claim otherwise. She is your employee, in your house, and what happens between you is yours.
What this gives you is something more useful than a complaints process. It is a clear, public statement of exactly what she agreed to, written before anything went wrong and available to both of you.
Which means you can hand it to her in week one and say: this is what I am expecting. And if something is not right later, you are not raising a feeling. You are pointing at a document she has already agreed to.
That is worth more than a body you could complain to, and it is honest about what it is.
If you would like to tell us about an experience with a caregiver trained here, good or bad, we do read it: [email protected]. We cannot promise an outcome, and we would rather say that than imply one.
Part of the certification
