Is Care.com safe? The short, evidence-based answer: Care.com is a legitimate company and a useful place to find caregiver candidates, but its default screening is a preliminary database check — not the kind of vetting that should ever be your only safety layer. A 2019 Wall Street Journal investigation documented nine caregivers with prior police records who were listed on the platform and later accused of crimes while caring for children or elderly clients, and in 2024 the company paid an $8.5 million FTC settlement over its billing and job-listing practices.
None of that makes the platform unusable — millions of families source candidates there. It means the safety outcome depends on the process you run around it. This review lays out the documented record, exactly what Care.com's background check does and does not cover, how it compares to an agency's screening, and the checklist that closes the gap. It is written as a companion to our complete guide to hiring a nanny, which covers the full search process from sourcing to contract.
Care.com is safe to use as a sourcing channel, not as a vetting service. Every caregiver passes a preliminary screen (Social Security trace, national sex-offender search, multi-jurisdictional database check covering 7 years), but there is no interview, no reference verification, and no fingerprinting behind a profile. The platform's documented failures — the 2019 WSJ investigation and the $8.5 million 2024 FTC settlement — both trace to the same root: it is a marketplace, not an employer. Families who hire safely from it run their own county-level background check, live reference calls, and a paid working interview before any solo care.
Is Care.com Legit as a Company?
Yes. Care.com has operated since 2006, traded publicly from 2014, and was acquired by IAC — the holding company behind Match.com and Vimeo — for roughly $500 million in 2020. It is the largest online marketplace for finding care in the U.S., spanning child care, senior care, pet care, and housekeeping.
“Legit” and “safe” are different questions, though. Care.com's business model is subscriptions: families and caregivers pay monthly memberships that open up messaging, boosted visibility, and add-on background reports. The company does not employ the caregivers, does not interview them, and — as its own terms make clear — does not guarantee them. You are the employer of anyone you hire, with everything that implies for screening and, later, payroll and taxes.
What the Documented Safety Record Shows
The defining event is the Wall Street Journal's March 2019 investigation. Its findings, all later acknowledged in substance by the company:
- Nine caregivers with prior police records had been listed on the platform over the preceding six years and were subsequently accused of crimes — including abuse, assault, and cases in which children died — while caring for clients' children or relatives.
- Hundreds of day-care centers were listed as “state-licensed” when they did not appear to be. In one 2018 case, twin toddlers drowned at a Tennessee in-home day care whose listing showed a license it did not have.
- Care.com removed roughly 46,800 unverified day-care listings — about 72% of them — in the days before the story published.
The fallout was real: the founding CEO stepped down five months later, and the company moved to mandatory preliminary background checks on all caregivers, plus Social Security number verification at enrollment.
Two things are true at once here. The 2019-era platform allowed caregivers to appear in search results before any screening ran — that specific gap is closed. And the structural fact that produced it — a self-serve marketplace listing millions of strangers — has not changed, because it cannot. It is the product.
What Care.com's Background Check Actually Covers
Every caregiver must now clear the Care.com Background Check (formerly “CareCheck”) before appearing in search results. It is run by a third-party consumer reporting agency and is genuinely useful — and genuinely limited:
| Included in the default check | Not included |
|---|---|
| Social Security number trace | Fingerprint-based checks |
| National Sex Offender Public Website search | In-person or video identity verification |
| Multi-jurisdictional criminal database search | Reference checks or interviews |
| Federal and county criminal records, 7-year scope | Driving / motor-vehicle records |
| Re-screening at intervals while active | Offenses before age 18; records outside database coverage |
Care.com itself describes the check as foundational screening, and its disclosures note that database searches are “not always 100% accurate” and may not reflect a complete criminal history. That is honest — criminal-record databases genuinely miss county-level records, and name-based searches miss aliases. Families can buy upgraded reports on individual candidates through the platform, which is worth doing, but even the premium tiers do not interview anyone or call a reference. Our nanny background check guide covers what a full screen looks like and what each layer costs.
What the 2024 FTC Settlement Was Really About
In August 2024, Care.com agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges on two fronts: inflating the number of jobs available on the platform (more than half of posted “gigs” came from users who had not bought memberships and could not actually hire anyone) and using deceptive cancellation flows — including a design where the button that looked like “cancel” kept the membership alive. About 2.9 million consumers bought auto-renewing memberships between January 2019 and March 2022; the settlement funds refunds and requires a simple cancellation mechanism going forward.
Read precisely, this is a consumer-practices case, not a caregiver-safety case — the primary victims were caregivers chasing overstated jobs and subscribers who could not cancel. But it is relevant to your decision for one reason: it is a second, independent, well-documented instance of the platform's marketing outrunning its reality. Calibrate accordingly. The full FTC complaint is public reading (FTC, August 2024).
See what a coordinated search looks like. The research is the easy part. In two minutes, watch how a Beverly coordinator runs the rest — agencies, screening, and contracts — so you don't have to.
Watch: Meet Beverly · 2 min →Care.com vs. a Nanny Agency: Who Screens What?
The fair comparison is not “Care.com bad, agency good” — it is a difference in who does the work and who carries the risk:
| Screening layer | Care.com | Reputable nanny agency |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal database check | Yes, automatic | Yes |
| County-by-county records search | Partial; upgrades available | Standard |
| In-person interview | No | Standard |
| Reference verification by phone | No | Standard, typically 3+ references |
| Work-history and CPR verification | Self-reported | Verified |
| Replacement guarantee | No | Common |
| Typical cost | ~$15–$40/month membership | $3,000–$6,000+ placement fee |
That price gap is the honest trade: with a marketplace, you save thousands of dollars by becoming the screener yourself. Neither channel is wrong — our agency vs. private hire comparison maps which families each one fits. In practice, the strongest searches run channels in parallel; a Beverly coordinator, for instance, works top local agencies and the open job boards at the same time, applying the same screening standard to every candidate regardless of where she surfaced.
How to Hire Safely From Care.com: A 6-Step Checklist
If you use the platform, use it as a candidate source and run this process on whoever you like:
Step 1: Buy the upgraded background check — then add your own
Order a county-by-county criminal search covering every county the candidate has lived in for 7–10 years, plus a motor-vehicle report if she will drive your children. Cost: roughly $100–$200, the cheapest insurance in this process.
Step 2: Verify identity against a government ID
Profiles are self-reported, and the platform's screening runs on whatever name and Social Security number the caregiver provided at signup. Before anyone enters your home, match the face and the name in front of you to a driver's license or passport — on a video call is fine. Thirty awkward seconds, and it closes the identity gap that name-based database checks cannot.
Step 3: Call every reference, live
Written references and star ratings are screening theater. Two or three live phone calls, with specific questions about dates, duties, and why the family would or would not rehire, surface more than any database. Our interview and reference-check question guide gives you the script.
Step 4: Run a structured interview
Same questions for every candidate, scenario-based, with notes: what would you do if the baby hit her head, if a stranger answered the door, if you disagreed with our discipline approach. Consistency is what makes red flags visible — a rehearsed answer stands out only when you can compare it against four others answering the identical question.
Step 5: Do a paid working interview before solo care
Two to four paid trial sessions with you home, at the full agreed hourly rate. How she engages your child in hour three — when she thinks no one is evaluating her — is the single most predictive data point you will collect in the entire process. Skipping the trial to fill a childcare hole faster is the most common shortcut families later regret.
Step 6: Keep everything on the record
Written offer, signed agreement, legal payroll from day one. Beyond the tax exposure, off-the-books arrangements strip both sides of protection if anything goes wrong — no workers' comp, no records, no recourse.
Red Flags Worth Ending the Conversation Over
Most Care.com hires go fine. The ones that do not tend to announce themselves early. Walk away when you see:
- Any push to go off the record: requests for cash pay, payment before a meeting, or moving the conversation off-platform before you have verified identity. (Wire-transfer and overpayment-check scams also run on the site — mostly targeting caregivers, but the same accounts message families.)
- Reference friction: references who are “traveling,” only reachable by text, or all added in the last month.
- Timeline gaps that move: employment dates that shift between the profile, the interview, and the references.
- Certification claims without paper: CPR or first-aid credentials she cannot show a card for — legitimate certifications are verifiable in minutes.
- Pressure to skip steps: a candidate who resists a background-check authorization or a working interview is answering your screening question for you.
The Verdict: Safe Enough — If You Do the Screening
Care.com in 2026 is meaningfully safer than the 2019 version that drew the WSJ investigation: screening is now mandatory before caregivers surface, re-screening recurs, and the FTC order cleaned up the billing practices. It remains what it has always been structurally — a classifieds board with a screening floor. Used that way, with your own checks layered on top, it is a reasonable sourcing channel, particularly for part-time sitters and interim care. Used as a trust shortcut — profile looks warm, badge says background-checked, kids are home Monday — it is exactly as risky as the record suggests.
Where it fits best, in our experience: backup sitters, date-night and after-school coverage, and interim care while a full search runs — hires where a parent is home or the stakes are bounded. For a full-time nanny who will hold solo responsibility for your children forty hours a week, treat the platform as one sourcing lane among several, and let the screening standard — not the channel — be the constant.
The uncomfortable truth of caregiver hiring is that no platform, and no agency, removes your screening responsibility. The difference is only how much of the work is done to a verifiable standard before a candidate reaches you. Decide how much of that work you want to own, and pick your channels — plural — from there.
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Even though we work to keep the information, stats, and details in this article accurate and up to date, please do your own financial and legal due diligence before acting on anything you read here, and reach out directly to the private companies and government agencies referenced for the most current details.