How suitable is an Au Pair as main childcare for a 4 year old?

[MGMidget]

I'm freelance/self employed and mostly work from home but do have meetings and do some work elsewhere. I have one child aged 3.7 and at the moment we have a nanny. I suspect she's going to move on soon and I'm giving a bit of thought to what we might do about childcare in the future. I wondered what people thought of having an au pair/au pair plus as a main form of childcare for a child this age? I probably need about 30 hours childcare a week at the most. Although I'd often be nearby in the house in an emergency I suppose technically she/he would be in 'sole charge' most of the time as I would be in another part of the house if I'm in. Also, I'd like them to do the pre-school nursery drop-offs and pick ups as well as taking my son out to the park or other activities. A good option or a bad idea??

An au pair plus should be fine in your situation.

You want a live-in unqualified nanny - call them au-pair if you like, doesn't matter what job title they have, most au-pairs these days are not au-pairs like they were in the past (working max of 5 hours a day, mostly household tasks, attending language school).

As a nanny I do 40 hours, whereas a traditional au-pair may only be doing 5-10 hours childcare with the rest being domestic duties.

It all falls down to the individual person in my view. You won't want to leave your child with someone who has no clue at all about children. It will also depend on how much that person feels they are worth, as they may not want to do the job for under the National Insurance Lower Earning Limit. Once you pay above that, it's PAYE time just like having a nanny... so may as well call them a nanny.

Sounds like a good job for someone who is currently an au-pair and who wishes to do more of a nanny job, as it will get them more childcare experience. So perhaps look at recruiting someone already in the country who is looking for a move out of a more traditional au-pair role.

i feel this is one of the forms of a traditional aupair /plus/ role. lots of aupairs i used to know had roles like this. five to six hours a day five to six days a week seemed to be a general rule when i aupaired ten years ago.

I think it would theoretically be okay as long as you don't have the same expectations you do as a 'proper' nanny.

The other thing I would be wary about if they're spending long periods of time alone with the child is the level of English the carer has. Au pairs with slightly questionable English become less of an issue for schoolaged children because they're getting a lot of input at school, the child themself is a more confident communicator and less likely to get frustrated if they're not understood.

Nick's assessment is good - you probably want someone who wants to move into nannying with previous au pair experience and a decent level of English.

I think this role is fine for an au pair plus type of candidate. But, I agree with frak that you will need to remember not to expect the quality of job you would get from an experienced nanny. For example, I have an au pair plus (almost but quite what I would call a nanny) and DS isshowing signs of teething just now. An experienced nanny I would expect to carry on without any input from me. But, my current au pair, I have to point her to the box of calpol, show what the dose instruction is, point her to the cooled teething ring, etc. She is lovely and very capable once I have explained things. But, I do need to explain more than I did when I had a nanny. On the other hand I pay her a lot less than I did a full time nanny. So I'm perfectly happy with the arrangement.

Thanks everyone. Being at home I tend to have more input with our current nanny anyway. Both the current and previous nannies were pretty inexperienced - qualified nannies having done childcare diplomas but with only a relatively short (less than a year) career history before joining me (e.g. nursery work, short term nanny job etc). So I'm hoping the transition to au pair plus wouldn't be quite as dramatic for me as if I had previously employed highly experienced nannies. Strix, the sort of explaining you are describing to me, I probably had to do a bit when our nanny was new anyway. Also, the language issues may not be quite such a big problem as I'm hoping to develop my son's French which he is learning already so I would be looking for a French au pair. Obviously it would mean I have to work harder on helping him with his English when I'm with him though! But it sounds like I would need the top-end of au pair plus or a bilingual nanny who has perhaps had previous au pair experience and is looking to progress to the next job. Not sure how easy that would be to find in practice though!