Advice re. hiring an au pair in the sticks

[librarygoddess1]

Actually, calling it 'the sticks' might be overgenerous. We live in Lincolnshire, and not the pretty, rural part with all the grammar schools. We live in the part that Channel 4 makes unflattering documentaries about.

With that out of the way, can I ask if anyone else has experience of hiring an au pair away from a major city, where there will be fewer au pairs, with whom the prospective au pair could socialise? We're not short of applications, and we've been very honest about where we are located. There are language courses 5 minutes away.

I'm just worried they will be miserable, (and perhaps quickly unemployable). We've hosted 15/16 year-old students on an exchange programme for four years, and some of them were lovely, but one or two were hermits, regardless of how much we took them out.

Are there meet-ups in the North - Leeds, for instance? We're ninety minutes away, and all our family is there.

Thanks in advance :)

We hired a Polish au pair 12 years ago while living in the middle of farmland in Lincs. We chose someone in their 20s hoping that she would be more confident and a bit more self sufficient than a younger au pair, but tbh she didn't seem very sociable and only went out on her own for a weekly language lesson. She complained that all the other students were Chinese so she didn't make any friends.

There must have been a Polish community not too far away as there was a deli selling all her favourite stuff from home in the next town, but she didn't really make an effort to get out and about, despite having a car at her disposal.

We didn't really have a social network to introduce her around as we were working all the hours we could, hence needing help.

I found it a bit stifling in the end, she didn't like being left in the farmhouse alone so if we went out as a family she always came too, even if just a trip to B&Q. I know they are supposed to be part of the family, but after several months it became a bit much and we hired someone to help with the business instead.

Thanks - that's helpful. We had similar issues with a few of our exchange students, but as their parents were paying an agency thousands for the privilege of sitting in their rooms on Skype, night after night, it was their funeral.

Of course, if I'm paying them, I don't want an atmosphere of doom in the house. Like you, we don't have time to socialise much, at least not during term time, but we are cheerful people and I dread the thought of the sunny Spanish faces in their profile pics looking like a wet weekend in Skegness, by the end of the first fortnight.

We've had just two applications from Poles amidst 141 from Spaniards since 4th May. There's much more lucrative work for Poles in our town than APing, I suppose; theirs so much factory and dock work.

Thanks again for your experience.

Yes, this was a few years back so things have changed a lot since then for people coming here to work.

We had a freezing cold trip to Skegness with our au pair one windy January day .

OP your posts are completely cracking me up.

Sod channel four

Thanks LadyHarriet! Perhaps you too have lived in a part of the UK targeted by Skint? I don't know if it's been broadcast yet, even. I'm afraid to look.

Have you had any luck with au pairs - wherever LadyHarriet resides? This is our first try. I could actually do to give up work and just reply to messages from Au Pair World; it's pretty time-consuming.

We have had several in the remotest corner of the Scottish Highlands. As long as you spell out exactly where you are, it is fine and we are still good friends with 3/4 - the 4th only lasted a few weeks as had to return to Australia to testify in a court case.

Thanks Roseformeplease - that is encouraging.