signing a contract with an au pair?

[Matina]

hello, we are thinking of agreeing with a hungarian aupair to come to our family and i don't know whether it is common practive to sign a contract or not. i mean the whole arrangement sounds a bit informal to me, but what do you usually do? also would i have to register her somewhere..like the city council??

I would have a contract in place. Way back in the time B-MN when we didn't have a clue, we had a nanny where we didn't have one...and when things got tricky with her it was awkward because we hadn't agreed certain things formally about what her duties were and what constituted misconduct. This is not to scare you, but I think it will be better for everyone if you make key things (duties, hols, pay, absenteeism etc) clear. You could consider using some of the contracts on line for nannies as a basis for this.

I have contracts with nannies but never with AP's, instead I have a big welcome pack which contains lots of info about the local area as well as list of duties and rules of the house. As they are not considered legally to be employees but are with you 'as part of the family' I think they should be treated as a big sister more than anything and I know my previous AP's would have been confused with a contract.

Regarding registration it depends on a number of things. Always register with GP ASAP, and you will also need to register with taxman if you are paying over the current taxable threshold (which is around 90-ish a week I think). Other than that, you only need to register with local authority if you are sponsoring them via a work visa because they are not part of EU

Hi Matina, we have a contract we send out to AP's ..you can just make one yourself as really it's an agreement.
It just covers, their full details (name, address, dob etc)
length of stay, hours, pocket money , period of notice on both sides and gross misconduct (theft etc)..
Everything else is covered in the welcome pack.
HTH's..

True, I had forgotten APs are not considered employees as such.