What is going rate for a mother's help?

[cheetahz]

Hi,

I will be looking for someone to help me one day per week from 8.30 - 3.30. I will be in the house also but working apart from feeds for my 2 month old....Ideally I'd like the person to be willing to put on a load of laundry, or make a basic meal or a bit of tidying up etc. while the baby is sleeping which I anticipate will be quite a bit at that stage still. What sort of rate should I be expecting to pay and is this more of a nanny job or a mothers help?

Ideally the person would also be free to do occasional after school hours helping out with my two older children also but that is less essential at this stage.

Thanks for your input

[WorkingMummy]

Do you have room to put the person up? Sounds like a classic au pair job, which is normally ?80 or more per week for a total of 25 hours plus a couple of evening baby sits. The person normally wants to attend language school, so four free-ish days a week would work for them. But you do need a spare room.

[kateland]

Sounds like a part time nanny to me-which I'm sure is ?10 per hour,depending on experience. I think nannies may charge more too for shorter hours. :)

[jollymummy]

An au pair cannot care for a child under the age of two years.

[WorkingMummy]

My 26 year old au pair (an out of work Spanish journalist from a massive family with loads of experience with tiny ones) helped me with my newborn from when he was a day old until last Thursday, (when he was about 8 months old).

She was amazing and I was very sad to lose her last week. She was particularly good at settling my baby: so patient and calm.

I generally work from home, and when I can't, I have a nanny. So the au pair was never alone at first. But by the end of her time with me, she had shown herself so capable that she subbed-in for my nanny, caring for all three of my children, on the odd occasion. Once when I had norovirus, she handled supper, bath and bed for all three with ease.

There are loads of very well qualified women from Spain being driven here by 50% unemployment rates back home.

I'd also say, in many ways, a newborn is easier to deal with than 2+ year old. Far fewer health and safety issues and no behavioural challenges tantrums etc.

So I really don't see why you can't have an au pair to help out with a 2 month old.

I think problems arise when people recruit au pairs and then expect them to work nanny hours/conditions. If you want a full time, sole-carer for you child/children, you need to stonk up a good annual salary with benefits and recruit someone with a proven track record. But if what you want is - genuinely - under 25 hours a week and you or another adult will be around in the background (so you do not run the risk of your au pair going do dally, alone in a foreign country with a screaming baby for 50-60 hours a week) then an au pair is perfect (and affordable).

[LoloBall]

I'd say that's a mother's help/nanny to cover all options! I think salary would be about ?10 net.

[Sol]

Agree, most of them will charge 10 pounds per hour

[sillywoman]

I think legally Au pairs can't have sole charge of a child under 2, but it would be fine to be in the house with someone else who was the primary carer. I'm sure someone who knows the law better will be along soon though.

A Uni Student might be a good bet for what you need cheetahz?

[purplehaze]

'There are loads of very well qualified women from Spain being driven here by 50% unemployment rates back home.'

and unemployment here ?

[WorkingMummy]

... is nowhere near as high as in Spain. Yet.

I'm pretty sure there is no law against leaving your 2 month old baby with an au pair. I've always done my child care by the book. Each of my employees has registered for NI, I have paid her PAYE in full (although there is none for an au pair on ?100 or less per week). I have all the right employer's liability insurance and I am myself a full time lawyer. I know of no such law.

I also know several families who have swapped from working mother of two children with a nanny, to stay-at-home mother of three plus an au pair to help out with newborn for first 6-12 months. No one has mentioned this issue. After my third, of necessity (I'm the main bread winner but also self employed and have no maternity pay) I returned to work very quickly, and my au pair looked after my baby for five hours a day (Monday-Friday only) to enable me to do this (while my 4 and 2 year olds continued with their busy programme with their nanny). As the OP envisaged, my mothers help/au pair brought the baby to me every few hours for a feed and was mostly in the house at first, so I could keep an eye on things. She was far from isolated or alone, and it really was a perfect set up for all. My baby boy, lucky thing, was cuddled and strolled by her, and sung to in Galithian.

Like I said, what's important is that you don't try to hire an pair and then ask her to do a nanny's hours. But one day a week from 8:30 - 15:30 with another adult in the house (albeit working) plus light duties on other days alongside the mother is not a nanny position.

You can also run into difficulties if you hire a very young girl who has never lived away from home before (whatever the age of your kids). But the sad fact is that with the job market in Europe how it is, you have a very wide choice of au pair at present and do not need to hire school-leavers.

[LondonMix]

It doesn't sound like a part time nanny, it sounds like a mother help without sole charge care. 10 net is not the avg nanny salary (it is a top salary) and even then 10 net is for live out positions whereas au pairs / mother's help get room and board, language classes etc in addition to money.

kateland Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Sounds like a part time nanny to me-which I'm sure

> is ?10 per hour,depending on experience. I think

> nannies may charge more too for shorter hours. :)

[sillywoman]

Thanks working mummy, I knew someone would be along with more knowledge of the law than me.

I'm interested in this topic though & have done a little digging. It seems that all the reputable Au Pair agencies are very clear that Au Pairs are not to be left sole charge of under 2's. Some mention their insurance then becoming invalid as a result. One mentioned that the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, the professional body that represents the recruitment industry, stipulates that Au Pairs should never have sole charge of user 2's. I guess if there's no law then it's each to their own - especially if you don't use an Agency to help with employing an Au Pair? Personally I would be very hesitant & thoughful on the issue given the weight of recommendation and advice against it. Usually recommendations by professional bodies are there to protect someone. In this case it seem that the advice is for the protection of both parties, the Au Pair & the child.

Working mummy you say that no one has mentioned this issue to you despite long knowledge of it happening in practice in families of your acquaintance? I wonder whether its because you didn't specifically ask (not being aware of the issue) or a perhaps a case of hear-no-evil due to the necessity of your personal situation? Whatever, the advice is out there & seems very clear, but you're right - it's only recommendation, not law.

[etta166]

In my childcare discussions with nannies (and now thinking of an Au Pair when I have #3) if I was in the house, then it wasn't considered to be sole-charge care. Sole-charge would be if you when to work out of the house and left the childcarer on their own, with no one to turn to if something came up that they weren't confident about deadling with.

The mum being in the house, even working from home, puts off quite a few nannies I met because it's not sole-charge or independent enough! I agree that most, if not all, Au Pair agencies say that you shouldn't leave them in sole charge of an under 2, but if I was home then I wouldn't consider that to be sole-charge. They also stipulate a maximum of 25 hours childcare a week. I think that there is some felxibility on both counts, depending on the Au Pair's age and experience with children.

[Smiler]

I don't think au pairs are paid enough to be in sole charge of under twos, even if it is allowed/insurable, which suspect it isn't.

[sillywoman]

I agree Etta166, and am aware that in my search for clarity on this issue I've moved the thread away from the OP's original question so I apologise. She's already said that she's going to be in the house so if she(he?) chooses an Au Pair the sole charge issue won't be relevant anyway.

[WorkingMummy]

The "see no evil hear no evil" comment is unfair and does not acurately reflect either my domestic arrangements or the state of my relationship with my closest family and friends. No "see no evil hear no evil" is going on around me and my child care situation. No "evil" is going on full stop.

"Au pair" covers many different people. Many of them are very young and very green. I would not leave a young person straight out of school, whom I had only just met, who had never lived away from home before, let alone in London before, alone with ANY of my children, regardless of their age. And the fact that the young person concerend WAS insured by X,Y,Z agency to look after (say) my 4 year old would not persuade me TO do that.

As I said, my "au pair" did not fit into that category at all. She was a professional, experienced, highly competent person who came from an enormous extended family with lots of experience with bottles and nappies, who proved exceptionally capable of looking after my baby. Unlike girls introduced via most agencies, my au pair was in London living independently when I recruited her, so I (and my mother, as it happens) met her twice before taking her on. She started off working along side me, and did so for many months at first. I got to know her very well. I am not stupid nor reckless when it comes to my children and I really do not think there is any agency or insurance company in the world who would be a better judge than me of whether it was safe to leave my baby with her, for the first time about a month after she moved in with us, for a couple of hours at a time between feeds, and later, for slightly longer periods when it was necessary for me to leave the house.

Of course, the agencies and insurance companies have to have crude, one size fits all policies to cater even for the most nervous and inexperienced school leavers, who potentially do not even have the language skills/confidence to buy bread independently, let alone to say something like, "WorkingMummy, I am unclear about how to settle baby to sleep, can you please help me?" But if you are lucky enough to find a gem of a recruit from the opposite end of the scale of competence and experience (and their are LOADS of such recruits out there, because of the financial crisis), why would you not trust the person, just because of what faceless people who do not know you, your baby, or the young woman concerned say about all au pairs in general?

Golly, really, no evil is allowed near my baby by me.

And, for the record, I also have one or two professional friends, self employed like me, who have engaged incredibly expensive, mature, specialist maternity nurses to tide them over during the period when I had help from the wonderful Spanish womon I recruited and - I have to say - I really prefer my way of doing it. The last thing I want is someone else stepping in as 24 hour "expert" carer for my baby. Others of course feel differently and know what is right for them, but the arrangement I have described was what was best for me and my LOs. And all who know me - with both eyes open - would agree.

My baby is now old enough to be out and about with the nanny and my two older children and so I shall not be recruiting a new au pair now that my Spanish find has gone home.

I do miss her though!

[WorkingMummy]

PS: on the odd occasion she had sole care, I paid her, pro rata, more per hour than when I was home.

[sillywoman]

No, sorry working mummy, I didn't mean it (or in fact say it) like that. What I meant was, harking back to your comment that you knew of several families with Au Pairs & no one had ever mentioned the no sole charge of under two's issue to you, is it possible that the rule was mentioned but because you had already decided on your own way of doing things & were happy with it, you just sort of didn't hear it? That's what I meant by hear-no-evil. It's a saying, I didn't actually mean that you were allowing evil anywhere near your babies. I think you've both misread, & misunderstood my meaning? The dangers of Internet communication - no nonverbal cues to convey tone & clarify meaning.

[WorkingMummy]

I see what you mean. My apologies, SW.

No. I have only very recently had an au pair, for the first time. My friends who have had an pairs specifically took them on to help out when their no 3 came along. I took an au pair on to help out with my third baby on their recommendations. But also as a result of my conversations with them I recruited an au pair+ and did not go for the agency supplied school leaver.

And like I keep saying, it was not ordinarily, never for very long and never at first, a sole charge situation. Which is also true of the OP.

[katgod]

I think this under 2 'rule' is a hang over from a previous era when there was a specific visa scheme for au pairs, when they were more in the traditional teenager living with a family to learn English and help a bit mode. To protect teenagers from exploitation I would think, there were rules about what was and what wasn't an au pair role. Also a nanny would look after younger children, and nannies are employees and so were not entitled to the more flexible visa scheme afforded to au pairs.

With relaxation in migration policies the visa scheme is no longer in place, au pairs are no longer just teenagers, and working from home is now more realistic. Each family has their own requirements and circumstances. I expect some agencies stick with the old rule to avoid exploitation of their candidates, and it is easier to have a fixed policy rather than decide on individual cases. But if you recruit your own both sides can determine what the arrangements will be.