Au pair friend exploited by "her" family

[someonestolemynick]

Hi all,

I have taken a 19-year-old girl from Germany under my wings.

She's recently (about a month ago) come to England as an au pair. From what she tells me she is made to work about 40+ hours per week and gets paid 100 GBP per months.
Regularly babysits more than the agreed 2 nights per week.
Gets frequently threatened to be thrown out of the house. Has been presented with a contract to sign her life away.

She is looking for a new family, but her current people are preventing her from going to interviews.

Just done a google for her/ rang shelter helpline, and there is very little help she could receive. Because she is not a british national she is not entitled to help from her council (as an eu citizen she would have had to be in the country for at least 5 years). She is to my understanding not vulnerable (other than being in a vulnerable situation and speaking limited English.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for any ideas.

Can you get in touch with her parents and arrange for a flight home?

Not sure what else you can do, perhaps another local family is looking for an au-pair.

Try getting in touch with the German YMCA au pair service and see if they can help find her another family.

here

Unless she is desperate to stay here, surely the best thing is to cut her losses and go home? Otherwise, unless she has somewhere where she can go and stay immediately and enough funds to survive until she finds another job, her options seem limited.

where is she?

What unexpected said.

Thanks, for your help and sorry for the silence.

She has found somewhere to stay for a couple of weeks and will be job hunting. She was in Barnet and is currently staying in Hatfield.

I agree, that the most sensible course of action for her would be to go home, but sadly I can't bundle on her plane and send her. She is an adult, after all. And I wouldn't have gone home to mummy at that age, unless I absolutely had to.

So she's already left her previous family?

She's left them today, crashing on someone's sofa with about two weeks to sort herself out or get a plane home.