Babysitters are expensive, and living on one income can make it hard to hire one. So what are you supposed to do when you have to go someplace without the kids? If you are lucky enough, you are blessed to have family and friends who are willing to provide free babysitting services. However, if you are not so lucky, you may want to consider establishing a babysitting co-op with other parents in your area.
A babysitting co-op is an arrangement with several parents to swap babysitting services with one another, at no cost. Babysitting co-ops can be started with several of your friends, or you could establish a town-wide co-op, and invite all local parents to join.
You can notify parents of the co-op by placing flyers on community bulletin boards, an ad in the newspaper, and word-of-mouth at playgroups. You will have to decide who you will allow to join the co-op (will you require references or only allow other single parents?). You may also want to consider putting a cap on how many families can participate and how many hours they can baby-sit in a single month.
You will need to create a plan for how babysitting hours will be swapped. You could simply match hour for hour; however, this may not work so great with families who have multiple children. My suggestion for these situations is to come up with some sort of a point system. For example: you may receive 1 point per hour for each child. So if you baby-sit three children at one time, you will receive three points per hour. Points can then be redeemed as payment for having someone baby-sit your child(ren). You may also allow participants to provide other services, such as picking children up at school or pet sitting when you are away on vacation. Be creative!
You will need to have a coordinator who will oversee who has how many points, who is watching who, etc. Many babysitting co-ops rotate this duty each month among participants. The coordinator is awarded with extra points (or whatever your group will use for compensation). There are also online programs, such as Babysitter Exchange, to keep track of this stuff.