Au Pair not keeping their own room clean

[SettlingBackIn]

Does anyone have any wording that they put in their au pair instructions/house rules about cleaning their own room/bathroom and about the host family's right to inspect the room/bathroom from time to time?

Also, does anyone have any wording they use about not gobbling up all the snacks from the larder between meals?
My view is generally that I provide 3 meals a day and anything else they must buy themselves. I've never had to say this explicitly and wouldn't be bothered about the odd biscuit but my most recent one has been comfort-eating and whole packets of jaffa cakes and pizzas have disappeared.

My current au pair is leaving today after just 5 weeks (her choice but we are not too unhappy).
I have had problems with her and a previous au pair not keeping their own room and bathroom clean. The bathroom is a particular issue as on one occasion I had to spend a load of time and effort removing and replacing sealant that they had allowed to go mouldy.
3 other au pairs have managed to keep the bathroom in a reasonable state so I know it is not impossible.
The most recent au pair was also keeping a lot of food in her room and left that and half eaten food lying around.

Thanks Toga and Harriet - that's very interesting. I didn't realise that you could have a different kind of arrangement. When I listened to the programme, they were saying that the APs had the expectation that they were going to be members of the family and were shocked that they weren't treated like that but I guess their host families weren't very clear.

What does 'member of the family' entail in practice though?

For example, our AP has the largest bedroom in the house with her own en suite, couch, desk, coffee table, etc. We have friends, a family of five, coming to visit from S America in January. I feel it would be rude to ask the AP to share with one of the girls so they can use her room, although obviously it's going to be a squeeze for everyone else. And she will get to spend time with the family too, on an equal basis. If I were treating her as a 'member of the family' strictly speaking, or if she WERE a member of the family you can bet I would be asking her to bunk in with a DD.

The reality is they ARE long term house guests on one level and do get some special treatment, but they are also employees too. It's a weird relationship for sure.

Hmm ... good point Harriet. I had just thought about being included on family outings and letting them help themselves to food and drink. That is an interesting conundrum and I think I would feel that I couldn't turf her out to share with your DD either. It is indeed an odd relationship

Harriet could you ask your AP if she minded if your girls went in with her for a few days during the visit? It might be an easier way around it.

Duchesse
Not really because the DDs go to sleep much earlier than she does. Also she has things like homework for her English classes and practice she has to do for another activity that I wouldn't want to disrupt. Also, it would basically be compelling her to spend time with us in the evening - she would want to spend some of this time with us but possibly not all, and we would also be gauranteed not to get any of our own space either - unless we went out. It'll be tight but we will manage. If she took any request along those lines the wrong way we'd have a very long rest of the time to patch things up. Can you imagine her speaking to next year's AP: "It was all going well until the kids had to sleep in my room for eight nights."

I guess I mentioned it just to illustrate a point because while most APs would say: oh yes I want to be part of the family I suspect they would not want to give up their room to a family's house guest and some of the other less than glamorous things that go along with it.

OP - just to mention that mould appearing in the bathroom isn't always a sign of poor hygiene - we have a great cleaner and I do our every other day, but it still comes back. Perhaps the bathroom isn't very well ventilated?

"HarrietTheSpook": What does 'member of the family' entail in practice though?

Your conundrum about the room is a really difficult one. I don't think there's going to be any easy solution whatever kind of arrangement / contract you have.

One my AP's friends ended up having to share a room with non-English speaking grandma on an extended family visit over! She found it very embarassing...

My AP offered to share a room / the sofa when my family came to stay. They're perfectly happy on the sofabed so I didn't take her up on it.

Now that she's living down the road in a student flat, we've agreed to accommodate each other's "overspill" as and when either of us have too many guests at the weekend.

Reading this thread as a newcomer I have to say the 'business-like' families do not come off sounding very fair. In fact it sounds dangerously close to exploitation. From what I understand au pairs have always been meant to be treated as part of the family. For some it seems like they are not really concerned if these young people are happy or having their (social/emotional/physical/spiritual/intellectual) needs fulfilled, only to make sure that they take up as little space as possible and do not involve any changes to their life (other than less housework and less childcare).

I wonder if their children grow up to want to work as an au pair themselves, how they would wish their host families would treat them.

This is why it's important to match up the expectations of the family with the expectations of an au pair...

Someone who wants a business like arrangement - room, board and pocket money in return for some childcare and cleaning, time to study English and have fun with their friends - is not going to fit well with a family who want their au pair to spend a lot of time with them, playing games, having dinner and going on trips out at the weekend. Those families post on here going 'why is our au pair ignoring us? she's never in!'.

Someone who wants to be part of a family isn't going to do well in a family who want the arrangement to be more business-like. That family would suit an independent au pair. They post on here saying 'my au pair is really clingy, this isn't what we specified - we wanted someone independent and outgoing!'

For those reasons guidelines like 'we prefer to have time as a couple in the evenings' are important because it doesn't raise the expectations.

If my DC went to be an au pair I would expect that family to give them all the legal protection required and uphold whatever end of the bargain they agreed to. If they said that they wanted to welcome the au pair into the bosom of their family and went back on that then I'd be pissed off but the majority of families who have the kind of business like arrangement just don't promise those things in the first place.
Both parties need to be upfront and select their match carefully.

The ones who exploit their au pairs are the ones without a contract, who say they will treat the au pair as a member of their family/give them that expectation and then don't. That's not fair to anyone. Sadly there are plenty of families like that who simply haven't looked into the realities of having an au pair or thought about the obligations. My view is that agencies are to blame a lot of the time as well because they don't seem to adequately prepare families, they don't provide accurate advice on contracts or working hours and they don't check up on the au pair afterwards to check that everything is okay.

There is no longer any obligation at all to 'be a host family' and treat the au pair like your son/daughter. There is, however, an obligation to be an employer. With that in mind it's much easier to have the professional relationship in place first because that is the base of the arrangement - you hired them, you pay them in return for work, you can fire them. Then if you're happy for them to be part of the family you can include them but that's for the family to decide and the prospective au pair to agree to or not.

Just to pick up on something

'dangerously close to exploitation'

Are you implying that laws governing working conditions in the UK are exploitative?

frakkinstein, let me put it this way. I've met way too many unhappy au pairs. Yes, I think there should be especially careful rules on employing student-age people because its so easy to have someone young and inexperienced who is overeager to please and doesn't recognise that they are being mistreated.

As a host family to an au pair you are their employer, their landlord, nutrition provider, calendar-setter, etc. etc. You are in a huge position of power relative to them, much more than any normal employer. Combine this with their age and you have a potentially dangerous combination.

I wonder what host families think they owe their au pairs. The obvious minimum is food, a room and some money. But I would say there should also be an obligation to give security, respect, privacy, honesty, respect for what they want out of the experience, honest support for their social and intellectual development, and openness for friendship / affection. Take these things away, based on au pair wages, and you're headed towards running a willing-labour sweatshop.

Anyone who has someone living under their roof should be willing to give that though. Personally I feel that the whole term au pair should just be abolished and one should refer to them as an unqualified live in nanny/childcarer.

The points you make about the employer having power apply to any live in employee, doubly so for their age and being in any foreign country. It's the lack of respect that so many so-called host families have which is detrimental and that lack of respect comes from 'but they're just an au pair' and 'I would expect my own child to do this'.

Who in their right mind wouldn't give an employee privacy, respect and honesty? To do otherwise, especially with someone living under your roof, is a recipe for disaster. In return the au pair owes the host family the same. Respect, in particular, is a two way street. People's ideas of privacy when living together are governed by their experience together - if an au pair spends their whole time in the living room then it's not giving the family privacy, they're acting as a full family member so you can't blame children for wanting to go into their room when they're 'off duty'. Things like that need to be laid out at the start.

The emotional/social/intellectual support I think depends on the family and that's where the mutual expectations come in. Openness for friendship and affection is where problems can start creeping in because it blurs the lines. IMO one always needs to be prepared to pull back from that affectionate relationship with an au pair and evaluate objectively. Clearly no-one wants to work with someone who treats you like a robot - no-one does - so employers need to think about their management style. Many of the threads on here about managing nannies apply to managing au pairs but people don't realise it...

I honestly wonder how many of these really unhappy au pairs had contracts (and understood what they were signing) and made any attempt to discuss what was happening with the family.

I agree with pts raised by Frakk. I personally think the 'business like' arrangements -provided this means the family is complying with a contract and adhering to the other requirements of UK employment law - are much better for the AP than a nebulous, fluid arrangement where they're supposed to be 'part of the family.' As I said before - what on earth does this mean in practice? This is no gaurantee that this kind of relationship won't be exploitative either. A family who wants the AP around all the time may also be expecting her to PITCH IN all the time - which is another word for WORK.

There obviously has to be some sort of cultural compoent - my reading of the legislation as to when employees who live in are not governed by minimum wage rules is that they aren't if they are sharing in family life. I suspect an AP who works 40-50 hours a week and NEVER or very infrequently does anything with the family would, if she took it to a tribunal, be found to actually be a nanny and the family falling afoul of the rules. I suspect that an arrangement where the AP works the part time hours that are usual for an AP for the going rate of 'pocket money', has meals with the family regularly, is paid for when she goes out with them and does go out with them from time to time, etc etc. would probably be found to comply with the legislation. This is just my supposition - don't know if anyone has tested it! Or knows more about the law in this area.