Babysitting Course in your home

It is the Canadian Red Cross Babysitting course, and a learner who completes it is issued a Canadian Red Cross Babysitting certificate. There is no prerequisite in the sense of previous training. You do not need any first aid background, and nobody is expected to arrive knowing anything. There is a minimum age, which the next section states exactly and quotes, because that is the one rule on this page that will actually stop a registration.

The curriculum belongs to the Canadian Red Cross and we teach to it, so we do not reproduce their lesson list here. If you want the current official description of what the course covers, ask us and we will point you at the Canadian Red Cross's own page rather than at our summary of it. What we can describe honestly is the shape of the thing: it is a practical course about being the person in charge when something happens, and it treats babysitting as a job with responsibilities rather than as easy pocket money.

What Delta adds is the people teaching it. Our instructors have gone to the real version of these calls, in real houses, with a frightened parent on the phone. So when a student asks what actually happens after you call 911, or how long a crew really takes to reach a house in the suburbs, or what a paramedic wants to hear at the door, the answer comes from someone who has stood there.

The fee and the exact hours are shown with each date on this page, and they are the figures that hold for the date you pick. Ask us before you register if anything is unclear: we would rather answer it now than have you find out on the day.

The Canadian Red Cross First Aid Program Standards 2025 set the pre-course requirement for Babysitting: learners must be 11 years of age or older, or must have completed Grade 5. That is the rule we enrol on, word for word. If your child is not yet 11 and has not finished Grade 5, we cannot register them, and that is a Red Cross rule rather than a Delta preference.

There is no maximum age, and we want to be precise about this because the internet is full of the opposite. You will see the course described as designed for young people aged about 11 to 15. That is a description of who it was built for, not a cut-off, and the Program Standards state a minimum only. A 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, or an adult who wants this particular certificate is welcome. We put no upper age limit on any course we run.

If the young person in question is younger than 11, say so when you contact us and we will point you at Stay Safe!, the Red Cross course about being safe at home alone, which has its own lower minimum. It is a different course for a different stage, and it is the better purchase for a child who is not yet looking after anyone but themselves. We would rather redirect you than sell you the wrong thing and have a nine-year-old sit through material aimed above them.

Two Delta rules apply on top of the age minimum, and neither is an age limit. Anyone under 18 is registered by a parent or guardian, who accepts the registration policies on the learner's behalf, and learners under 16 do not hold their own portal account. We also collect very little about a young participant on purpose. Separately, the Red Cross Program Standards require youth classes to be supervised throughout, with learners not left unattended. That is a staffing obligation on us, not something a family has to arrange.

The online version is a real class, not a video to click through. An instructor teaches it live, sees your learner, answers their questions and watches them practise, and the certificate at the end is the same Canadian Red Cross Babysitting certificate the in-person class issues. Nothing on it says the course was taken at a kitchen table.

Because it is live rather than local, anyone in Canada can take it. You do not have to be near Calgary or Leduc, and there is nowhere to drive to. That matters most for families in small towns and rural areas, where the nearest scheduled babysitting course is a two-hour round trip and most of somebody's weekend. It also matters for a young person who is ready for the course but not ready to spend a day in a room full of strangers.

What you need is ordinary: a device with a camera, a reliable connection, and somewhere the learner can move around and get down on the floor without being in the way. A phone works, but a laptop or tablet is easier, because they will be watching a demonstration and copying it at the same time. Headphones help in a busy house.

The manual is posted to you. It is part of the course under Red Cross rules, so it cannot be declined and the fee is the same either way, and the digital copy opens the moment you register so reading can start before the parcel arrives.

The day is taught in parts with a long break in the middle rather than as one unbroken stretch, because a young person cannot hold attention for a full course day and pretending otherwise produces a certificate without the learning. The Red Cross sets the teaching hours and they are the same online as they are in a classroom, so the day is split up rather than shortened. Exact times are listed with each date on this page, and every part is required.

An adult needs to be home. Not in the room, not watching over their shoulder, but in the house and reachable. A young person is not left in an instructor's care online the way they would be in a classroom, and we ask for a phone number we can call if a learner disappears from the screen and does not come back. Classes are not recorded.

This is probably the first time anyone will pay you properly for anything, and it is worth being clear about what is actually happening. A family is going to leave their children in a house with you and then drive away. They are hiring you. That is a real job, with a real employer, and the reason a course like this exists is that the job has consequences a paper route does not.

The certificate is the part you can point at. When a parent you have never met asks what you would do if their toddler started choking, or whether you know where to find their address to give to a dispatcher, or how you would handle a two-year-old who will not go to bed, you want an answer that comes from having practised it rather than from having thought about it in the car on the way over. Being able to say you hold a Canadian Red Cross Babysitting certificate is a fair thing to bring up when you talk about what you charge.

Here is the uncomfortable part, said plainly, because pretending otherwise would not help you. Something can go wrong on your watch. A child chokes, falls off something, has a reaction, spikes a fever, locks themselves in a bathroom, or somebody knocks at a door you were not expecting. The point of training is not that you will be calm because you are brave. It is that you will have already met the situation once, in a room where it was safe to get it wrong, so your hands know what to do while your head catches up.

Expect to be on the floor and hands-on rather than watching a screen. You will practise, be corrected, and practise again, which is uncomfortable at first and then quietly stops being uncomfortable. Nobody is embarrassed for finding it hard, and nobody in the room started out good at it.

You are buying two things, and only one of them is a certificate. The other is the first structured conversation your kid has ever had about being responsible for someone smaller than they are. It covers the parts families tend to skip: what to ask a family before they leave, what information you need written down, what you are allowed to decide on your own, and when you stop and phone an adult. Those habits transfer to babysitting siblings, and they transfer to the years after that.

The part of this course that matters most is rarely the bandaging. It is judgement, and a young person being willing to say out loud that a situation is beyond them instead of hoping it resolves. That is what the course is built to do, and it is a good trade for the price of a course, whatever the price turns out to be once we confirm it.

There are three cases where we will tell you to buy something else. If your child is under 11, Stay Safe! is the right course, not this one. If you are the one who wants first aid training because you have young children at home, this is a youth course and there is an adult course that fits you far better. And if you are looking at this because a teenager wants paid work in a licensed daycare, a preschool or an out-of-school care programme, that requirement is set through provincial child care licensing and by the employer or licensing officer, not by a training provider, and this is not the course that answers it. We will not tell you which certificate does satisfy it. Send us the exact wording your teen was given and we will tell you honestly which of our courses it appears to point at, including when the answer is none of them.

On registration mechanics: you register your child rather than them registering themselves, you accept the registration policies on their behalf, and media consent is a separate box that you are free to leave unticked. Nobody is excluded from a course for declining to have their photograph used. Tell us in advance about anything that affects how your child will take part, from a hearing consideration to anxiety about being in a room of strangers, and we will plan around it rather than discovering it on the day.

It is a Canadian Red Cross Babysitting certificate issued to the learner who completed the course. That is the entire scope of it, and it is a genuinely useful thing for a young person to hold when they are looking for sitting work in their own neighbourhood.

It is not a workplace first aid certificate, and it is not a credential for licensed child care roles in Alberta. Those requirements come from provincial child care licensing and from individual employers, not from a training provider, and this is not the course that answers them. It is also not a promise about maturity: a certificate does not by itself make a twelve-year-old ready to sit for a newborn, and no reputable trainer would tell you otherwise.

If somebody has handed your family specific wording, from a community league, a camp, an agency, a school programme or a family friend with a policy of their own, send us that exact wording before you register. We will read it and tell you honestly whether this is the course that matches it. Sometimes the answer is that it is not, and we would rather have that conversation over email than have you find out afterwards.

On expiry: the Canadian Red Cross sets the validity terms for this certificate. We confirm the current terms with you in writing at registration rather than publishing a period here that could be out of date by the time you read it. When the learner does move on to an adult first aid certificate later, that will be a fresh course with its own validity, not a renewal of this one.

There is nothing to book on this page today, and we are not going to pretend otherwise with a fake calendar. What you can do is register your interest. Tell us the learner's city, whether you want in-person or virtual delivery, roughly how old they are, and the window that works around school, and we will contact you as soon as a date opens. Interest enquiries are how this course gets scheduled, so telling us is not a formality.

Before anyone pays anything, we will confirm in writing what the run involves, what it costs, what is included, and the refund and transfer terms. Nothing about this course is committed until you have that. If you get a number from anywhere else, treat it as unverified and check with us.

Groups are usually the fastest route to a date. A school class, a scout or guide group, a church youth programme, a community association, or simply a handful of friends who all want it at the same time. We can bring the course to your own hall, school or centre in Calgary, in Leduc and the greater Edmonton region, or anywhere else in Alberta, for an added fee covering travel and instructor time, and we travel elsewhere in Canada and internationally on request. Tell us the group size and the window you are aiming at and we will tell you what is workable rather than promising something that is not.

We also offer this course virtually as well as in person, and which format runs depends on the intake. If one matters to you more than the other, say so in your enquiry. A young person who learns better with an instructor physically correcting their hands should be in a room, and we will tell you when the next room is.