Hiring someone to do the housework can be a big help, but before you hand a key to your home to a stranger, what is the best way to check them out? Instant background checks may not protect you.

For Jacque Line, time at home with son Donovan is precious and busy. So Jacque's mom offered to hire someone to help her clean as a gift. "All the big businesses, yeah they'd come out and they clean my dishes, they do all sorts of stuff, but they wanted twice as much money.”

So Jacque interviewed several small cleaning crews before hiring Feather Dusters, owned by a mother and daughter. “Right now it's just family run and we don't have to worry about if someone's going to take something,” says Joyce Rollins of Feather Dusters.

Joyce doesn't have to run background checks on her employees since they're family. Other companies do and claim it protects us, but Nick Jasa with the background check company One Source says don't take their word for it.

“There's no magic box that you can put someone's information into and receive back all of the information that's out there.”

Nick says we need to ask one question when it comes to background checks. Is the company going to county courthouses and searching records? If not, "They don't have the type of information that you should be most concerned with. People that have assaults, people that have theft, shoplifters."

While we can protect small valuables like cash and jewelry from being stolen, we can't lock up everything. Clothes, golf clubs and leather jackets are common items that are stolen.

Douglas County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Marty Bilek see reports of home thefts all the time and warns it's not just these items we should be worried about. “Something that's even more damaging is when thieves will come in your house while you're not there and actually steal your identity."

Deputy Bilek says a good thing to do, if you keep loose change in your home, is to count it before and after a cleaning crew comes in. Why? Thieves often start small.

Jacque did her homework before inviting a crew into her home and she says it's been worth every penny. "I can't get everything done while he's sleeping. They spend an hour doing what it would take all day for me to do while watching my son.”

Many of these companies also claim to be bonded and insured. While that can protect you if something gets broken, it does very little when it comes to theft.

Whether we hire a background company online or through the Yellow Pages, always make sure they are checking county records in every state that person has lived for the past seven years.

Surprisingly, it's not that expensive. You should be able to find a company to do this for around $30.