How are your au pairs coping?

[underneaththeash]

As the title says - just wondering how everyone's au pairs are doing. Most of mines au pair friends managed to get home before lockdown, but she has one friend who is rattling around in a big house alone at the moment and the family are stuck overseas.

Our au pair also does care work, so is massively in demand at the moment, which is great as we don't really need her - although having a extra person to help with the cleaning is very useful. She's managing to stay positive and in contact with friends via Houseparty.

We've also decided not to look for our last one, we were looking for someone from September as I unsure if our current one will end up travelling and also I'm not sure if my business will pick up enough to actually warrant having someone in.

We got a new one a fortnight before lockdown - she was lovely but we more or less told her she should go home to her family, so she left after that fortnight.

I had initially thought it would be great to have an au pair if things were locked down and was worried things were going to shut down before she came and then it would be really hard but TBH I am relieved we don't have one with us at the moment. It would have been totally unfair as she'd get literally nothing out of it - no friends, no cultural experience and be stuck indoors with us, plus it would have been another mouth for us to feed, generally a bit awkward in a stressful and emotional time to have someone else in the house etc.

I had a few months left on Au Pair World and I had started looking for someone for September (last one was due to leave end of July) and one girl is nice and seems keen, so I am probably going to ask her though honestly I don't rate the chances of anyone being able to come here by September (I figure discretionary travel will be a no-no for a long while), and even if she does we may have to send her home if there's another lockdown next winter. But I'll keep on with it for now. I guess I can continue to wfh if kids go back to school before we get anyone to help - again, I can't imagine using rush hour tube for a very long time, even if the office can in theory reopen.

Ours left to go stay with friends. I had asked her if she wanted to be repatriated and she had said no. But she didn't want to stay cooped up with us the whole time either.

We're really lucky as our decided to stay (the situation is managed very poorly in Brazil and she doesn't want to risk going back). She's a homebody anyhow so lockdown doesn't bother her. She is doing an amazing job looking after the kids, doing homework with them whilst DH and I are busy working. She even spring cleaned the kitchen yesterday! She'll be getting a very good bonus at the end of this. There's no way DH and I would cope without help right now with the kids at home.

@Roses2 mine's from SA and is also quite glad too that she's not there at the moment. Plus she's been with us such long time now that she's more like family anyway.

@Echobelly - yes, not the best time to be an au pair...I only know of one other family where their au pair stayed and she had to improve her English level before starting university in a few months.

We managed to get the other au pair I mentioned home to Italy last week, as her family decided that it wasn't worth coming home to the UK for the foreseeable future and my au pair mentioned that she was really struggling mentally.

We have agreed to take on the September au pair, but I've said we'll review the situation at the end of July, when we should have more of an idea what's going on - eg might kids be going back to school, is there any chance that flights will be going (I am doubtful of this, although I can imagine they may accept people travelling for longer stays - they won't want people going in and out of the country in short bursts for certain). I'll also have to be honest with her about how open things are and whether she still wants to come if she can't do certain things. She's in Germany, where they seem to have mananged things effectively, unlike here!

Our au pair has thankfully stayed with us as I am an essential worker. My husband works also but is self employed and his work has pretty much dried up now. We didn’t ask her to, but are very glad she did! She’s found it hard at times but has said that she’s glad she did stay (think she has a boyfriend over here). We’re very fond of her, as are the children. She has asked to be paid more for staying as her friends have been and I’m in two minds. She has been with the kids more as I didn’t send them to school (an option due to my status when husband was working- now he’s at home and home schooling) but actually she didn’t keep up with their washing like she would have before. I was doing multiple loads of washing and cleaning the house on my odd days off. So part of me feels that we should give her more despite the financial hit we’ve taken (although how much??) and part of me thinks that if I’m going to give her extra then hoovering and cleaning the bathrooms is probably not unreasonable.
Is anyone else paying more to au pairs who stayed?? We do want to do right by her

Our au pair is still here and whilst we're carrying on paying her, we actually don't need her and she's doing very little. She makes the DCs bed every day and still does their washing and ironing, however there's not a lot of that now and as we're working from home, we're doing all the meals & supervising schoolwork etc.

We have tonight told her that we're halving her money as she's doing less than half the work we've been paying for and is costing us a lot more given how much food she eats and the fact she's always in the house now.

She agreed and we will put her money up again as soon as the schools are back but ideally she would have returned home when we offered it before it was too late, however she didn't want to go back to Spain and said she wanted to stay here. If we'd known it would last this long, then we would have insisted.

Is anyone else paying more to au pairs who stayed?? We do want to do right by her

I'm paying my au pair more because she's actually doing a lot more. She is homeschooling both of them and keeping them entertained and quiete so me and DH can work.

Is your au pair actually doing more? If yes and you can afford it then I'd be more inclined to pay more. If she isn't doing more hours than her normal pre COVID routine then ask her why she thinks she should be paid more for the same (or less) hours.

Thanks for your replies- she’s really not doing any more than she was and often doing less. I think I will talk to her about doing some more cleaning as currently I’m spending my weekend doing that. How much more are you paying your au pair roses2 if I may ask? Thanks

My au pair gets £100/week pocket money + £25 for part cleaning the house + £66 extra for looking after the kids whilst me and DH work. £66/week is what the nursery reduced their fees by (I aready get 30 hours free) so I've passed that on to her.

She is working approx 30 hours per week, around 5 hours per week more than pre covid. But the work now is much harder to home school a 4 year old and 7 year old whereas previously she would get them dressed for school, walk them there, collect them then go to the park so I saw the extra money, which I could afford, as fair.