Information for Families

Recruiting someone for a ‘normal’ job can be a long process, often with multiple stages in determining the job specification and requirements, screening and short listing, interviewing, assessing candidates and so on. Why should choosing someone, who will come and live with you and be looking after your children, be any less thorough than that?

The following describes our services, how we go about them and why they will be important to you in finding the right au pair for your family.

Establishing Requirements and Expectations

This is critical to ensure a structured and solid start to the whole process. We need to check your expectations and what you are looking for in an au pair, find out about your family and how you spend your time, determine what duties and responsibilities they would have and discuss what type (personality) of person would be most suited to the family and the role.

Finding and screening potential Au Pairs

This is an ongoing process for us where we travel overseas and personally meet aspiring au pairs throughout the year. Of those that meet our high standards, we register them including an interview in their native language as well as English - where we are able to assess their English ability. We discuss their expectations as an au pair, use our unique system based on established psychometric tools to establish a detailed profile of each person and check references, immunisation & health records and can perform police checks.

Matching

We select a short list of potential Au Pairs that match your minimum criteria and are most suited to your family based on yours and their own respective profiles.

Helping you to choose

We discuss those au pairs on your short list and check with the au pairs that your family is a suitable choice for them. We can facilitate telephone calls where you may need additional help in having someone to help with translation of specific or complex questions. Using your input we draw up a schedule of duties and can help you to prepare a letter of invitation (critical if a visa is required).

Helping you to Plan for your new Au Pair

We can help with travel arrangements and finding the cheapest tickets for the au pair, give you information about language classes in the area, supply you with a family guide for hosting an Au Pair with many useful suggestions and tips that will help with the experience and making it more successful.

Supporting you and Your Au Pair when they are with you

We provide details of other Au Pairs in the area, arrange trips and other events to help your Au Pair build their social circle, we provide a regular news letter for the Au Pairs, will support you with any questions or if any issues arise that you feel needs extra help or guidance. In the event that any issue is not solvable and you or the Au Pair find an untenable situation to remain together then we can make arrangements to find a replacement if needed and arrange for your Au Pair to return to her home country.

Giving you options in the future

Our fees for long term placements are reduced for 2^nd and subsequent placements because we’ve already established your family profile, so unless your requirements or circumstances change considerably, we do not need to go through this information in such detail again.

Payment and Options

The current 2005 prices for search, selection and placement are as follows: -

The full fee is payable within 7 days of our invoice date. Invoices not paid within 7 days will be subject to a surcharge of 10% initially and a further 5% each subsequent month on a compounding basis.

Weekly payment terms can be offered where the placement fee is spread over the length of the au pair placement and payment is made by direct debit.  This is subject to a 20% surcharge on top of the fees in the table above. Example: A summer Au Pair is arranged for 10 weeks over the summer period and the fee is paid each week by direct debit at a rate of (£150 x 1.15)/10 = £172.50/10 or £17.20 per week.

For families who come to us for the first time for a summer Au Pair and then wish to continue with a long term Au Pair, 50% of the fee for the summer Au Pair will be discounted against the long term fee.