The family that hired Midori Uematsu as a live-in nanny was so thrilled she accepted their offer they invited her to Thanksgiving dinner and bought a special cake that said "Welcome, Midori,"

They will pay her what she asked: $1,700 a month, with no deduction for her room, private bath or board. They offered to pay for her driver's education course, give her a car and take her on family vacations if she wants to go.

It is a happy boom-time union made possible because Uematsu will soon graduate from TLC Edmonton, Alberta's first licensed training program for live-in caregivers and one of only two programs in Canada that helps foreign-trained caregivers qualify to work here. "I always had a dream of living in Canada," Uematsu says, but she didn't have the training or experience to qualify for traditional immigration.

"We are seeing between 6,500 and 7,000 applications for nannies a year."

Mark Zeliger, Alberta regional manager for the foreign-worker program

easily doubled in the past three years," says Mark Zeliger, Alberta regional manager for the foreign-worker program, which processes employer applications to hire live-in caregivers.

"We are seeing between 6,500 and 7,000 applications for nannies a year."

But according to Citizenship and Im­migration Canada, last year just 1,700 foreign workers came to Alberta to work as live-in caregivers.

So Uematsu was a lucky find for Dr. Krista Leicht and her husband Graham Highcock, who had been looking for a live-in nanny for more than four months.

"It was appealing because she already knows the city and she has connections here, so she is more likely to stay," Dr. Leicht says. "We were prepared to offer a job at the first meeting."

Uematsu is pleased, too.

"I feel very well-prepared, because we studied so many areas," she says. "I am so excited. I wish I'd known about this opportunity a long time ago."

Then she learned of Canada's unique Live-in Caregiver Program, run by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which aims to bring foreigners to Canada to work as live-in caregivers. After two years of work, successful applicants can apply for landed-immigrant status.

But Uematsu was still missing a key qualification: six months of in-class care-giver training. Typically, people take this training in tlieir home countries. Now, they can attend a special vocational school in a cosy west-end duplex.

"We teach them everything they need to know to work as live-in caregivers," says Shirley Phippen, founder and in­structor for the three-year-old program, which currently has eight students and is growing so fast she is already looking for bigger space.

"There is nothing to compare to training in Canada to work in Canada - you get to learn the Canadian way from a Canadian. When they graduate, they have all the groundwork that they need to start working here."

The six-month curriculum costs $5,000, paid for by the students, and includes courses on how to care for children, the elderly and the disabled, as well as health and safety, nutrition and cultural training.

Students are taught to cook Canadian favourites like chicken and meatloaf, and learn nursery rhymes and fairytales.

In three years, Phippen has graduated 30 students from Japan, Germany, Australia and Vietnam. All have gotten jobs - some without even looking.

" The demand for live-in caregivers has