What happens if it doesn’t work out with our au pair?

Most of the time the au pair and hosting family relationship works out really well and is a positive experience in many ways for everyone that is involved, but sometimes it just does not work out mostly for personality reasons, and that can be difficult and stressful for everyone involved.

Au Pair Australia has a clearly defined set of steps to follow when is not working out between host family and au pair, first we encourage you to always keep all communication lines open with your au pair, you should both feel confident talking to each other about how things are going, and if things are not going well, try to resolve problems among yourselves.

If you do not feel that you can resolve things on your own you need to let us know and we will schedule a mediation meeting with all of you, to come up with a possible solution for all of you to improve the situation for a couple of weeks, if after trying to work this out the situation does not improve, we come to a solution about what is going to be happening in the incoming weeks, the au pair has to stay with the host family for up to 2 weeks during her replacement, if she continues working during that time she needs to be paid, but if she decides not to work you don’t have to pay her a weekly pocket money and decided any modified household rules such as curfew and car use, we need to talk with you about rematching you with your new au pair, unfortunately we cannot guaranty continues childcare so is also important to have a backup option for childcare in case there is a gap between au pairs.

As I said transitions fortunately are rare but they do happen and they are not easy, the more you set expectations ahead time or open openly with your au pair, the more likely you are to avoid a transition or be better prepared to handle one with our help if it should occur.