Not sure where to start with regard to AuPair

[TennisFan]

I am a regular, with a name change a while back - used to be MrsBoo.
I try to work full time, but recently both my DC had to leave after school care as it was working out very expensive (~25/day each) and even more in holidays.
Since last Easter I have been trying to leave after lunch and do the two school runs at 2pm and 3pm and then supervise homework and do my own work too - it is becoming very hard and everyone is suffering.

I do not know anyone with an AuPair so don't have anyone in real life to ask for advice. We have a spare room with ensuite, and my 2 DC are age 6 and 10 both at primary school.

We live in a thriving village with good bus links about 4 miles from a larger small city with good shopping, college, cinema etc.

I was thinking perhaps an AuPair could help me by picking up from school, helping with homework and taking to some after school activities like tennis. So roughly working from 2-5 each afternoon, and maybe one or two evenings for an hour or so.

I really do not know where to start, I am in Northern Ireland so don't know if this will make it more difficult.

Many thanks if you can help

Hiya - sounds like a very easy life for an au pair, and I don't see why NI should be a problem.

To find out go to au pair world look at other peoples profiles, put up one of your own and see how much interest you get.

Bear in mind you will get a lot of unsuitable response (e.g we sepecify driving non-smoker - we get a lot of non-drivers, quite a few smokers and some non-driving smokers), but filter through and see if you are getting interest from suitable candidates.

There are a lot of othere threads on here about the recruitment process, contracts etc.

Thanks, yes I have been trawling through them all - picking out the websites and best bits of advice.

Think an au pair would be ideal for you. I would also look at greataupair.com.

Good luck.

Ok I have registered with aupair-world for now and see that I need to upgrade to premium to be able to email etc directly. But too cold to go looking for my wallet, so will do this later on.
I will now look at the other site thanks Strix

Have looked at the other websites great au pair - new au pair etc, in a lot of ways they are btter in providing more information. However APW has the volume and recruiting this way is a numbers games - I expect to go through 50-100 enquiries (made or received) to get down to the one, only APW has the volume to deliver this.

But only on greataupair.com can you search for say:

nationality = german
years of childcare experience = at least 2
non smoker
not part of a couple
religeon (if this matters)
and more...

Leaving you with a far more targeted sample and less sorting required.

Strix - absolutely agree in those terms it is a better website, (you can specify nationality on APW - I do this as I only want au pairs from countries covered in my free overseas calling plane on the phone!) but I find that once I have filtered like this I am often left with a selection of one or less.

Why don't you just give them skype? (which all of mine have quite happily found on their own)

They do that as well but not all their friends have it and their parents rarely have it.

Ours have a skype account- you can use it to ring normal phones which is really cheap compared to normal phone prices (although I concede, not free).
I also prefer apw to greataupair simply because there are more ap's on it