Had a great idea, but now where would I find this ery specific kind of au-pair, if thats what it would be...

[mustrunmore]

In essence, friend of a friend needed a place, so we had great idea but she had got sorted by time we asked her.

We have very small spare room to offer. In exchange, I'd want maybe £20 a week for bills, plus the person concerned to be an evening babysitter every other week Monday to Friday and one sat and sun morninig per month. on that weekend, they would have the Thurs and Fri free instead. These are based round dh's shifts pattern, and I do classes every night so it'd be so much easier than begging favours from friends all the time. It means of course that their days are free for work or study or whatever.

Would anyone wanna do this? Where should I try? I obviuolsy want someone lovely and honest and reliable etc etc as they'd be living with us and be responsible for my boys.

AtheneNoctua - I was at your guess of £80 Standard AP rate is £60-65 (I pay more because I am rural so harder to recruit APs).

Lilybeto - You don't happen to be studying in Cambridge do you?

I see your logic mrm, but in reality employing live-in childcare doesn't work that way, unfortunately. Very kind of your friend to offer the £20/week though.

I do see where you're coming from, and you might find someone, but I do think that most people looking at gumtree will say, they want me to work for them AND I have to pay toward bills? No thanks!

I think it'll be easier to find someone via a 'rooms for rent' site/part of gumtree.

And bear in mind that you would be obliged to provide food for an au pair, so that would push the costs up further.

I think your answer might be in splitting the two - get a lodger and charge x per month, then employ a babysitter for the evenings. That way, if you lose one, you haven't lost the other ( ! ) and it's much easier to find regular babysitters and lodgers than a combination of the two. You may even find that the lodger would step in the babysitter lets you down.

No, I wish! I also don't get use of the car!

Yeah, that makes sense paperchase.
I think what I really need is a friend who just happens to be homeless

Try the Lady mag, gumtree and greataupair.com but tbh, you are expecting too much in my opinion and the room should be in exchange for domestic duties, not an additional charge on top!

Quick! Find a rich mate and burn their house down!

mrn - I can also see where you're coming from - but you would be competing against people who would be paying as well as offering a room (we looked into the idea of a 'demi-pair' but in reality if you want someone reasonable to look after your kids you have to at least match the basic au pair rate, even if you need less hours)

Hijack (sorry) AtheneNoctua - any chance you could give me a realistic idea of how much to pay a live-in nanny, I have a thread about my school holiday childcare dilemma here Thanks

I once did this sort of thing. I used to deliver the children to school every day, and then have them a couple of evenings a week, plus a couple of weeks in the school holidays.

I lived rent free and paid a small amount towards phone.

It worked well for us all, but these people were friends already, who had a very big house.