Au pair?

[gemloving]

I have two children, 4 & 2 and as of September 2024 both of them will be going to preschool and year one, so both will be there for the full time school hours, ages will be 5 & 3. I know this seems far away but I'm a planner.

I am pregnant with baby number 3 who will be going to the same childminder as my kids now, so the au pair would have no responsibility for baby, just the older two boys which would include:

• Give them breakfast at 8.
• Drop to school for 9.
• Pick up at 3pm. Play with them.
• Prep dinner for kids for 5pm (easy dinners, they only eat easy dinners haha)

If one us works from home, I finish at 5pm and my husband finished at 05:30pm so we'd take over then, or pick up baby and then take over with the kids.

I am home on Fridays and don't work (4 day week for me), so I haven't worked out if I'd need her at all then.

Have you had an au pair? My colleague has one and absolutely loves it. What's your experience? We'd go through the same agency my colleague went through.

Where does this agency get its au-pairs from?

The biggest problem is that the biggest source of au-pairs used to be EU gap year students but this has dried up due to Brexit in 2021 so au pairs are much harder to find these days as there is no legal visa route anymore

There are still some Commonwealth passport au pairs so you might find one from Australia, Canada, South Africa etc. But be wary that some people who advertise themselves as "au pairs" may not have the right to work in in the UK and could land you in lots of legal trouble

Was going to post this
since brexit, au pairs are like gold dust
if from EU they need pre settled status
make sure you do your due diligence with the agency
you can get au pairs from tier five countries such as australia but pay expectations have gone up a lot
such a shame as we had au pairs for years and it was wonderful