Scottish Au Pair contract

[DumbDad]

Hi again.

Couple of months ago heaps of you gave me much appreciated useful info regarding Au Pairs. Well now I have had an Au Pair for nearly 4 weeks, and it is working out very well.

However I haven't got a contract formalised yet, which I am keen to do ASAP to keep it all right, as it were.

I wonder if anyine would be so kind as to CAT me a typical AP contract, especially one relevant to Scottish law?

Would really appreciate it if someone could.

Thanks again for the previous help.

I think employment law is one area which is convergent in which case standard contract will do.

Can't put attachments in a CAT but CAT me and I will send one back

Glad you got something sorted.

I can recommend DIOMs contract
Glad you've found someone and hope it's all working out for you.

I've been thinking about this. DIOM, it is really good of you to pass on this contract. Do you think it would be worth setting up something more formal for this sort of thing? I have to hold back from offering specific advice here, and occasionally amuse/confuse people by inserting a disclaimer into my posts for reasons I won't go into now (basically PII).

It would be great if there was an organisation which stood for best practice in employing nannies/au pairs. The Business Link web site has some good information, but the stuff relevant to employers of domestic staff is hard to separate out from the bulk of it which is, quite rightly, targeted at small busineeses. Same with HMRC.

The stuff that commercial organisations (mainly nanny/au pair agencies and payroll agents) make available is limited, and as we know sometimes dangerously out of date.

Any thoughts anyone?

Oh, sorry for the hijack

There should be a Mumsnet guide! Or at the very least a page on here with relevant and up to date info.

Its an interesting thought MrA, as you know I have updated my standard contract with some suggestions from you.

Not sure where we would put it. Though I notice great au pair had updated their website recently which was almost exactly a recent thread from here!

I remember Mr A had this in mind last year and I think it's a good idea. A google account with shared login / password and use the docs feature to work on sth together? Use a thread here to discuss the kind of things that might go into a contract or a manual or other doc. We could put our contributions on the google docs account then elect an editor or an editor per document.

I put loads of documentation together (mostly for me, not the a/p) when I recruited. An advert, a contract, a list of questions to ask them on email, and then on the phone, a daily routine list, reminders (how we do stuff generally), a jobs list for when she's not looking after kids, a safety list, a list of things to remember when we go on our weekly expedition up Everest day out (my kids are very small), a new a/p prep list, a list of other a/ps in our area!! I'm sure lots of people have similar things and it is silly to reinvent the wheel each time.

As this a/p is very good I use the lists more to remind me what to remind her verbally about and I think this is the ideal.

I am reading Hearts and Minds at the moment and there's a bit in it about how the mother has forgotton that au pair recruitment's a bit like childbirth - you forget how painful it can be until you do it again!

It's a good ides for information that is advice/tips etc but it wouldn't be the right place for infornation that needs to be accurate and factually correct.. Looking at the great au pair web site they are recommending that au pairs get paid £50 a week - I wonder how many families take this as a factual guideline..

'Concensus' on these forums seems to be achieved when someone who has a different view to those posted by the regulars decides it isn't worth the hassle anymore in bothering to post - and so incorrect information is laid out as factual by this 'inner circle'.

agree with treeesa.
btw. yahoo groups could be used to gather information, handbooks, houserules etc.

Treeesa you're now part of that inner circle, we dutifully chant that the au pair status has been abolished except for Romanians and Bulgrians under the age of 28 where the old rules still apply (5 hours a week etc), but they may have a different employment status from having been in the country already and they can do an au pair job after the age of 28 if they have an accession worker card for another reason.

And most of the informatio is backed up with links - usually by nick who seems to have them all saved! I am yet to work out how to do links on my phone...

Yes, giving information particularly when you can link to an authoritative source is fine.

But giving people draft contracts to use is a whole different ball game, and I am not happy that a Yahoo group or similar would provide enough protection from an agressive lawyer trying to recover the losses someone's employers liability insurance has paid out.

What we need is an organisation for promoting best practice for employers of childcarers and other domestic staff. Can anyone think of a good name?

But surely if you send it with a disclaimer which says 'this is a draft and you should take legal advice if there's any aspect you're not sure about' would cover it?

Sadly the industry is too unregulated for people to realise sometimes that they are even employers.

Yes a decent disclaimer would form the basis of my defence against a claim. Of course I would have to prove that disclaimer was effective, and that the claimant had read and understood it. Shouldn't take my solicitor long to prepare the defence. Then the pre-hearing reviews - lets say 3 days in all, I'd get 'mates rates' for this so only a couple of grand. Then a barrister for court, lets say 2 days for £5k. So I am about £7k out of pocket before I get to demonstrate that I have no liability.

Unless my PII insurer decided they were at risk and wanted to take it over of course - my house might be safe if they decided to settle out of court, I just wouldn't be able to work with a successful PII claim against me .

And of course this claim could be repeated hundreds of times.

The possibility may be remote, but as long as individuals are responsible for producing and distributing this material, it would exist.

Fortunately it is easy enough to set up an organisation to sit in the middle and take the responsibility. As that organisation is worthless, noone is going to sue it.

Even a checklist of useful stuff to have in a contract would be better than nothing gathered from the the threads. Mumsnet does a downloadable checklist like that for going on holiday. That way it's only a checklist of useful information, not a contract.

My contract at present includes details on: responsibilities, room, money, travel here, meals, details about phone use, internet, weekends, evenings, inclusion in activities, reviews at the beginning, alcohol, medical and dental treatment, friends visiting, holidays, cleaning own accommodation, notice period, what's dismissable behaviour,

I have a less formal email that lists things like what happens when they arrive, weekly days out, how i will help them meet people, study, references.

The stuff about us, the town and area and the food I put in the advert

FH - your list seems to tick all the boxes I have.

It's not often I make an unqualified statement on Mumsnet, but that contract is rubbish.

"Both parties must aggree that in the event of conflict, a genuine attempt to abritrate a solution must be the first reaction. Cancellation of this contract by either party should be resort"

And it doesn't provide any of the information which must be provided (although not necessarily in the contract, but this thread is all about a template contract that ticks all the boxes) under English law and also under European law, although I don't know whether the national legislations of Germany and France have caught up with that yet.

France has its own specific au pair contract set by the state because au pairs - as in the old sense of the word - still exist there and anyone on an au pair visa has to use that contract (as my exMB found out to her horror).

I should probably qualify that with had because European legislation may have over-ruled it.

Do au pairs in France still need to register with the police or maybe it's registering that contract you mention frakkinaround with the police or some body.. A colleague of mine moved to France and said that it was quite complicated a process to have her au pair registered.. but then she said many things they had to do were complicated - I guess it depends what you get used to..

Well AFAIK (living in France) everyone has to register with the mairie (town hall), non-EU citizens have to go to the prefecture (police) to get a 'carte de sejour' and anyone working is supposed to register with URSSAF for social security. Incidentally that's a process which took 11 months for me (as an EU citizen) and I STILL only have a temporary number. I would assume that if your visa status is as an au pair, because they do still have AP visas for non-EU citizens, then you would need to show the contract at the prefecture to ensure you were living with a family, who spoke French, who weren't going to exploit you so you meet the conditions of your visa BUT that's an assumption. I do know an American lass who's au pairing over there now and a couple of Australians so I could ask them what they did!

It is horrifically complicated. The French just looooove everything registered. Passport, driving license, social security....nightmare! And they're all 6 months behind so according to them I still live in Paris, my bank have only just caught up with me moving so the State has no chance, even though I've re-registered my driving license and my residence here and I specifically did it in my maiden name so we didn't confuse them even more.