Is their an age limit for the children au pairs look after?

[Jill72]

A friend suggested getting an au pair for when I return to work and I anticipate my baby would be about 11 months old. Is this too young for an au pair? Not sure if there are any rules??

It's not rules as such, but since the majority of au pairs have no childcare experience above a little babysitting, no first aid skill and have English as a second language they are not ideal for looking after very young children for long periods of time. The general guideline is that they should not be expected to look after under 3s.

You can find the occasional au pair who has suitable experience. We once employed an au pair who had a year's experience as a nursery nurse, but again, our children were already school age so had learnt to talk and we were only asking her to look after the children after school.

Even if you find an au pair that has baby experience you need to consider how many hours childcare you would need - you mention going back to work but not whether this is full or part time. Generally an au pair would work 25 hours a week, an au pair+ up to 35 hours a week.

IMO au pairs are more suited to school age children.

It entirely depends what you mean by au pair and what kind of care you need.

Before/after nursery, possible. FT care/extended sole charge then possibly not but it totally depends on the childcarer, their experience, their qualifications and their language capabilities - whether you want them to speak English, bearing in mind it might not be brilliant, or their native language, in which case you may have a preference but could be tying yourself to having childcarers who speak that language.

If you want FT care they won't be much cheaper than a nanny - remember a standard au pair's wage is based on a limited number of hours doing not particularly onerous duties and anything beyond that should be compensated accordingly.

The 'rules' only govern 2 nationalities now but customarily 11 months would be too young. I'd say you're probably looking for a nanny.

Thank you for your replies - all new to me and I can see this will be a steep learning curve!!

If you are considering an au pair you clearly have the space for a live in. Why not consider a live in nanny? The pay is much lower because it includes room and board. If you have a spare room with it's own bathroom it might be ideal for you.

It would only work if there is an adult working in the house most of the time. You also would need an older, more experienced AP with robust baby experience, and they do exist but are comparatively rare.

You may find quite a few au pairs actually who could cope on their own with a child that age for a certain period of time. It's not just the judgement part of the experience though i.e. what they'd do in an emergency, appreciation of risk, but their abililty to deal with the monotony/long periods of time with a child that young, sticking to routines even when they are a bit boring for the adult. That sort of thing you really need a professional nanny for in my experience of au pairs. EVen if you're working from home, I think it could end up being hard for you to supervise.

I personally think an au pair either end of the day plus cm or nursery is fine for that age though.