Prospective Au Pair. Opinions?

[SouthLakes1]

She's 18 and French. English pretty good. We haven't skyped yet.

All sounded good, have exchanged quite a few emails with her. Seems to meet our requirements.

Then she admits that she did 2 weeks as an AP with a family in the UK within the last month. She said they made her do 70+ hours a week, she was expected to look after the children and then do the cleaning after in what should have been free time, she also had an extra child to look after who was dropped off each day. Her original agreement was 35hours a week childcare/cleaning so she asked to leave.

She's saying she wants to see written contracts before travelling this time. Which is fine, i would expect that myself if i were an AP.

Should alarm bells be ringing to steer clear?

She can provide references from a host family she stayed with for 3 weeks in guernsey last year and has happily given me their email to confirm.

So does she only have 1 x (failed) 2 week experience and 1 x 3 week experience and nothing else you can check?

I would say you need to try to ring the people she was with and get their side of the story - she may well be telling the truth, but you never know.

And definitely call the Guernsey people (I find people are more honest on the phone than when they're committing to writing). My main question - would you employ them again?

Providing a written contract up front is fair though.

Does she have any other references from home?

There are people who take the absolute piss with au pairs, so it's quite possible she's telling the truth. Also possible she's lying though

As an aside, I find it hard to believe she'd want to be an AP again after those experiences when frankly she could come here and potentially get other jobs. What us had looking for from the experience with you? How good is her English?