Decided that an au pair is the solution to my childcare please give me the low down...

[clutteredup]

.. good bad plus minus good places to find good au pairs where not to look etc.

Does this sound OK ?
We have an old house with 2 ensuites and no 'family' bathroom - DCs guests usually use 2nd ensuite so au pair could have en suite room and we'd share our bathroom with the DC and guests - not perfect but quite manageable, DC have a separate toilet by their bedroom. Room is big enough to have bed wardrobe bedside table and shelves- can put a TV in aswell.

Have 3 DC all school age so need help first thing to do school run (walking distance) and after school till I get home. Rest of time ,weekends and school holidays I'll be at home. What else could I expect her to do - tidying hoovering DCs rooms/ toilet / washing/ ironing - or would that be extra? If one of the DCs were poorly would I be able to leave them at home with her? What's the going rate in the south west? What other costs apart from extra food?

We live in a village but walking distance to small town and good buses trains to larger towns cities nearby to go out. There are likely to be other au pairs around but not sure where to find out where they are to help with finding friends - what would you normally do?

Sorry its a lot to ask but I'm completely clueless so just need some advice from people who have au pairs to find out what it's really like. DH reckons it would be annoying having someone in the house but seeing as I need help and he's not around to help most of the time and doesn't help with that bit anyway I'm not exactly sure of the alternatives - this way I'd be able to get myself ready for work like he does without having to sort the DC out too. I'd be leaving too early for a CM and if I found one that would take them I'd have to get the DC up really early to get them to one before I left for work - DH often abroad so I couldn't get him to do the drop off.

All advice very much gratefully received - thank you.

I've had 6 au pairs in total over a period of 7 years. Some were fantastic (particularly the one who was with us for 2 years), some were good & some less so. So, you definitely don't get what you pay for with aupairs. I've paid the same each time!
It is a cheap way of getting help with your DCs & around the house - which is probably the biggest upside.
The downsides are having someone extra live in your house, they usually require quite alot of front loading - so quite alot of your time to get them up & running initially.
If you let them drive a car, the insurance is usually very high.
Some of them eat a surprising amount - so definitely worth factoring that in to your calculations.
The younger ones may need you to act as a bit of a parent, so you will have to ask them to turn the music down, not to come home drunk from a night out, teach them that it is not a good idea to wash all their clothes together, including the bright red scarf that has just ruined all their white t-shirts etc.

Double
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm simply stating that the au pair arrangement is not a professional nanny being underpaid becaue their foreign or whatever.

A family has to look at all the considerations as to what kind of childcare is available, where they can compromise (such as providing additional management/support), and where they can't. Our au pairs have other qualities that we want our daughters to aspire to and set a very good example for them (in most cases) although they need support in other areas that a professional nanny would not.

And I also disagree on the pay/package not being proportionate to the responsibilities they have, when you are talking about the terms that Fraktal laid out (which is what we offer.)

If CJN is really there all the time - I have a 3 year old with special needs and a 2 year old. I'm not about to leave them with an 18 year old with no qualifications or experience. Our au-pairs come having never lived away from home, some have come for summer holidays between school years, others in gap years between school and university.

I think this highlights a great thing about au-pairs. There's a huge variety of situations in which it can work, and a huge variety of people wanting to be au-pairs.

CJN I wasn't being unsupportive of you.

No, I didn't think you were LadyHarrietSpook. I was trying to explain that what we need is an extra set of hands, and one that will be there as part of the family and understand the whole situation by living very much as part of it. When you have a child with SN it's a very different situation. You don't need a childminder, or nanny (who'd probably feel very annoyed at having the parent there all the time). So an au-pair fits our bill very well, but it's not a typical au-pair role by any means. We don't need someone to help raise our children part time. We need more hands. I physically can't get out the door without more hands, as neither child is road safe, one has partial hearing loss and is possibly / probably on the autistic spectrum (diagnosis yet to be confirmed) meaning he really needs an adult just for him when out and about to remain safe.

Though some clearly think I'm exploiting young Europeans. Fortunately, they don't and I don't!

cjn, my DS is ASD & from my experience, I would say you may find you have to pay more if you have children with special needs and you may find it more difficult to find an aupair.
To be fair, most people are looking for an aupair because they need an extra set of hands. I haven't met many families who have an aupair so they can sit around all day, while a late teen, early 20s raises their children!

PostBellumBugsy I think you may be right. DS is still only 3.5, so it's the gap between him and his peers isn't as great as it might become (well that all depends on how he progresses of course). Luckily for us lots of people have wanted to come knowing exactly what the situation is. One past au-pair even learnt sign language and subsequently changed her choice of university course to become a speech therapist, after us all getting trained up by SLTs to help DS.

And you are also right that people don't get au-pairs so they can sit about! However, when you say you're a stay at home mum and have an au-pair many do assume this unless you explain the whole SN situation. Mind you as you're probably aware of people make some bonkers assumptions until they have the reality of having a child of the spectrum explained. Even then people are often very prone to misunderstanding. And you know what, so was I until I found myself in this situation... We all live and learn. Personally, I think all our au-pairs have found it a very rewarding and eye opening experience helping a child with SN.

I find the arguments about how much pay for au pairs really missing the point; I have been on both sides - have been an au pair twice and have had au pairs myself.

When I was an au pair it was a fantastic way to live in New York without having to worry about setting myself up in a foreign country and an initially very scary city for an 18 year old - rent, bills, getting a bank account, buying food; I would have never been able to afford moving there on my own and finding my way. Instead, I was instantly part of a family and moved into a lovely home and started straight away earning pocket money. And it is pocket money, because all of it was money that I could spend as I wanted (apart from travel costs and back in the dark ages when I was an au pair only yuppies had mobile phones) on souvenirs, clothes, sweets etc. and not on necessities for survival. When I had problems I could go to my au pair parents.

Now we have au pairs ourselves I still think it's a great arrangement. Ultimately - you want your au pair to be happy because presumably you do not want somebody unhappy to look after your children.

Be upfront about how much you are paying - as another poster said - being an au pair is not about making money, it is an easy way to live for a limited time in foreign country.

Yes, there are some exceptions, but that doesn't mean that the au pair arrangement as such is a bad one in principal.