Dangers of Au Pair Care
I have been writing about the hidden costs of Au Pair, as well as the dangers of leaving your child with a stranger that may have not been properly screened by the international hiring agency or the American agencies. It appears to be standard policy with many Au Pair agencies to NOT inform new families of any problems the Au Pair had with a previous family, which could lead to a dangerous situation and in essence hold the Au Pair care agency liable for any damage done.
If you read through the nearly 100 families that have commented to my previous blog The High Cost of Au Pair Care, you will see that the system isn't working very well and could use a reform.
I think one of the main problems is that families pay the Au Pair agency all 12 months of the Au Pair fees up front, instead of monthly when they pay the Au Pair. The agency fees are roughly equivalent to what the Au Pair receives. If it was a pay as-you-go-model then it would create an incentive for the agencies to better manage the Au Pair/family relationships and prevent a lot of the problems that are occuring and we read in the posts.
However, this has happened yet.
I felt that a post by Monica Briens to my previous blog should be highlighted
Monica Briens is calling for more governmental reguation, which might solve the problem another way. If you are interested in participating please contact Monica directly at monica.briens@gmail.com. Please keep this post updated with any of your comments so that the public can stay aware of the progress.
My goal is to help the Au Pair system THRIVE and allow Au Pairs, Families and children to build loving relationships. Perhaps this blog will help figure out a way for that to happen. As it is now, the Au Pair system appears to be flawed. However, with a little help, we can work together to fix it so everyone benefits.
Monica's Post:
I just found this blog now, and would like to ask if anyone would be interested in commenting on a piece we are putting together around some of the systemic issues across au pair programs. Some of the issues are serious.
Specifically, this is a piece on a number of federal government regulators and how they lack the manpower, authority, and management required to govern the entities they are charged with overseeing. The State Department and the cultural exchange program is my beat. With the election year, politicians have addressed the program issues regarding illegal immigration for which the au pair program has been identified as a path for illegal immigration.
Additionally, other systemic program issues have been raised such as child welfare issues, negative impacts to U.S. diplomacy and false advertising practices locally and abroad. Questionable profit driving methods that compromise child safety have also been raised. Many charge this a money making program, quite in contrast to the cultural exchange program for which the agency's receive a privledged status of from Congress.
There is talk on the hill regarding changing program status and this is the motivation for the coverage.
If you would like to comment in any way, or have any information you'd like to share, please email me at:
monica.briens@gmail.com
posted by Ms.Money @ 9:44 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Hi,
I was Au Pair for 2 years and I personaly had a great experience, especialy my first year. But all other girls that were in my area before me or came after had many problems with their families and vice versa. Girls were overworked, they wouldn't get extra money for extra hours, they all would stay with kids while parents are away on business trips for several days and again they wouldn't be payed or they would get something that you would give to the poor on the street. Girls would go out all the time partying and when is time for work they are not capable to do anything.
All program is just a mess. Instead of beeing great experience for children, parents and au pairs this all thing is turning into nite mare.
We have been host parents 3 times so far using Au Pair Care. All three ended up in re-match, despite our best efforts. We were naive the first time, and we matched with a 25 year old au pair from Japan to care for our 3 month old son and our 3 year old son. She was an 'elite' candidate, which was supposed to mean she had experience with infants. Once she arrived, she jumped in right away with our 3 year old, but avoided our baby for several days. We asked her to be more involved since she would have to be able to care for both children, and she admitted she was scared to care for a baby, and that she had lied about her experience with infants. Rematch after 2 weeks. We did not have time to start the process again, and decided to use other child care until both boys were older. When our children were 2 years old and 5 years old, we tried Au Pair Care again. We selected a 25 year old girl from Peru. Her application boasted about all of her experience teaching, and babysitting, and she portrayed herself as very outgoing and energetic during the interview. We realized once she arrived that we were snowed. She was agoraphobic, and she refused to take the boys outside to play. Ever. She claimed she was afraid that if they went outside they would be recruited by gang members and lead a bad life. (We live in the suburbs). She spend between 5-15 hours per day on the telephone calling Peru, and hid in her bedroom during all of her off-duty time, sitting in the dark, binging on junk food, talking on the telephone. We told her the boys had to go outside and play for their health. She said she was raised to stay in the house everyday and never go outside. In a word, she was LAZY. One day she called us at work, crying, telling us our 3 year old refused to come inside the house, and was sitting in his stroller in the garage (it was 15 degrees outside and very cold). She asked if it was okay to just leave him there for his nap until we came home 3 hours later? Another day, we caught her trying to bribe our son with a candy bar to go up to his room and take a nap. She did not know the first thing about using the most basic household appliances, from a toaster, to a washing machine or dryer, to a vacuum cleaner. She did not even know what the word for mop was, in English or Spanish. She would leave our children unsupervised while they were eating alone in the kitchen, while she was in her bedroom on the telephone. She lasted 5 weeks. Au Pair Care allowed her to rematch with a different family. Sadly, we came to this decision during the holidays, and the company rep's did not want to have their holiday plans ruined, so we had to pay for a plane ticket for her to stay with relatives (non-reimbursable expense) so we could transition to a new au pair without drama. Our third au pair came from re-match. She was with her original host family for one week before the host family requested rematch. The au pair told us the problem was a "personality conflict". We were stuck, and had just sent the Peruvian au pair off on an airplane. This girl was a 22 year old from Brazil. We felt we had learned many things from our mistakes with the first two girls, and we interviewed the Brazilian for over two hours with many, many questions, which she answered very well. Does she have the energy to keep up with two very busy boys? Of course, she said. Can she do arts and craft projects with the boys on a rainy day? Sure she can! Is she family oriented? Of course! Does she hang out at the night clubs all weekend long, every weekend? NO! She would never do that! We requested a match with her. She arrived two days before Christmas. By New Year's Eve, she was fully immersed in the Brazilian social network in Northern Virginia/DC/Maryland. She was gone, every weekend, all weekend, at the clubs, partying with friends. She ran out the door the minute one of us came home, and was gone until curfew-- sometimes later. She refused to spend any family time with us, even holidays, and preferred to party with her friends on Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, family birthdays, etc.. She requested vacation, which we approved, and we made our own plans to vacation during the same time, since we were the only child care back up when she was gone. Her plans fell through when her friends backed out, but our plans were already booked and paid for. She was upset that we didn't allow her to renistate her vacation and go with us, and cause us to have to take more time off for her new vacation plans later i the summer, which was time we did not have to take off from our jobs. She complained to all her friends and our neighbors about how poorly we treated her while we were gone. She was never asked to work over 40 hours per week--EVER. She even refused to work one Sunday when we had to attend a parent's only open house at our son's school, because she had social plans with the "girls" (Brazilian au pair network). She had every holiday off, was paid in full every week on time. She never made an attempt to be a part of our family and treated us with so much ingratitude and disprespect we were dumbfounded. Her weekend nightlife caught up with her, and caused her to wreck our truck while driving the kids to the bus stop one day. She failed to notice a parked car behind her when she backed out of the driveway (less than 20 feet), despite the fact that a camera displays objects behind the car on the large screen in the vehicle, which is augmented by a loud beeping sound as you approach the object. She did 3 thousand dollars worth of damage to both vehicles. We fixed these messes and gave her another chance. We did not want her driving the children for awhile, which meant no summer outings. She was very angry about this and once again complaned to all of our neighbors about us and how she is 'cooped up' in the house everyday. The final straw was when she made plans to attend a rock concert without telling us, and then stayed out way past curfew. We knew she was in no shape to care for children the next day, so we had to take time off to let her sleep, to ensure our children were in good hands. We decided that her reasons for being an au pair were to socialize first and foremost and not to take care of our children. Our kids would beg her to watch them play a 30 minute soccer game, or go to a karate tournament. She refused to go if it was outside her work shift. After 9 months, we called it quits with her, and decided after three srikes with Au Pair Care, that we wanted to go with a company that might do a better job screening applicants, and verifying their child care information. The Brazilian will go to her 3rd host family in less than one year's time, since she is deemed suitable to have another chance by Au Pair Care. We feel that a few things should change with regard to this program:
1) A psychological test should be mandatory. Are they able to adjust to a new culture? Are they suitable, mentally, to care for children? Results should be made available to host parents.
2) The application should be changed. I really don't care if they like to play badmitton or go bowling. The questions should be open-ended fill in the blank questions that get to the heart of their experience. How have you handled a child's tantrum.., etc. They should have to have a verifier for each of their responses, whom host parents can contact. This also might help assess their English language skills better.
3) If an au pair goes into rematch, potential host parents should be able to talk to the previous host parents, instead of taking the word of a young girl who may be trying to cover up mistakes she made or safety issues she caused with the children.
We like to think we have tried very hard to be good host parents, and we have bent over backwards to make our au pairs feel at home with us. We never asked them to be maids or servants, and we never took advantage of them. We followed the rules. They lied to us. We fell in love with the cultural exchange idea, and still hope we can find that match out there who will love our kids, and enjoy this family, and the opportunity to experience our culture. We will try with a new company one more time and see if we can experience success without getting jaded.
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