Au Pair / Home Help advice

[AJAS]

Hello

I am looking for some help with my home and children but a little apprehensive with having someone living with us 24/7. My husband works full time and I work 4 days a week. Ideally we would like someone living with us Mon - Thursday to:

- help get the children ready in the morning, give them breakfast ready for us to drop at nursery (from September this will include one child being dropped off and pick up from school)

- 3-3.5 hours daily domestic chores - cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking for the children

- pick up children from nursery at 5.30 feed and bath ready for bed (giving us flexibility to be late home)

- one nights babysitting (mon or Tue or Wed)

- Typically I think we need 5-6 hours a day mon - thurs although I am flexible on times and duration

I am happy to provide board, food, expenses etc. in addition to salary during this time. I need to flexibility of having someone around in case we are late so structured daily hours are difficult.

Does anyone have an arrangement like this and know how I can find this help or am I being unrealistic and I should try an au pair who would fit most of the criteria above.

Thanks

Anita

[WorkingMummy]

I think it's a bit of a long shot, as it sounds au pairy, and people wanting to fill that kind of position normally want/need to live in full time.

As long as you are happy to do your own due diligence on candidates (which is mostly about telephoning their references and asking sensible questions) it would be worth posting a highly specific advert on findababysitter.com and seeing what you get. I have had a lot of luck with this. (The site is not simply for babysitters, but nannies, au pairs...)

You do tend to get a lot of answers from people who want you to change the job to suit them. And as your requirements are likely to be hard to fill, I think you'll get more of that than most. But as long as you ruthlessly screen out those that don't fit (don't even reply) and as long as you have a bit of time (say, 2-4 weeks) to wait for the right reply to come in, I have found this only a little more hassle, a lot cheaper and a lot more flexible (in terms of what you get) than the average agency.

If you do go ahead with this kind of advert, use a secondary email address: you might be inundated!

With the job market how it is, you never know, you may get lucky.

Good luck!

[AJAS]

Thanks for the tip I will certainly try it out.

I thought it was a long shot but you just never know!

[MelissaVF]

You sound like you are looking for a nanny/ housekeeper. Their pay is similar to nannies but they do the job as you describe.

Au pairs should only really do light domestic chores - i.e. a bit of washing ironing, not full house cleaning and it is also quite a lot of sole charge as well. I agree posting on findababysitter or gumtree is a good place to start and if you google nanny/ housekeeper you'll find a lot of e.g. job ads and descriptions

[reren]

Just to add to the mix - I was apprehensive about sharing the house - but it has been really easy with both au pairs. They tend to develop busy social lives and so aren't around on weekends much anyway - and the huge benefits of having an extra pair of hands around far far outweighs any negatives. But it is all about finding someone you like and treating them really fairly. It does sound like you want a bit more work from someone than would be fair to ask an au pair - so might need to go for nanny/ housekeeper - but don't let the sharing the house thing put you off - it really is fine.

[WorkingMummy]

Echo what Reren says about sharing the house.

Au pairs do not generally want to sit around watching tv with you in the evenings. We never saw ours at the weekend at all. Everyone is apprehensive about sharing, and then everyone says its fine, or even enjoy it.

I also do not think your job description would be too much for an "au pair plus" (?100 a week). But you might need to be a bit flexible with the cleaning - au pairs normally want to attend language classes in the day. A dedicated cleaner for a few hours per week might fill the gap?