Au pair: Preparing for your departure

After you have secured a job, there may or may not be a waiting period during which you will have a chance to organise the practicalities of moving abroad and to prepare yourself in other ways. If you are applying to the International Au pair program as Nanny overseas and going to a country that requires immigration procedures like Canada, you may find out that you will need our agency support and a couple of months ahead to apply for your visa. Is always important to get professional help as there are a lot of Risks involved without the support of an Au pair agency. In addition to deciding what to take and which ticket to buy, you should think about health and travel insurance, necessary documents such as visas, and about having a contract drawn up.

Your contract

Once you have received a job offer and have decided to accept, what happens next? If you are dealing with our Au pair agency, the offer will come from us with the Au pair- Host family household handbook. If you receive a contract direct from your future employer, you should inform the agency that an offer has been made and accepted, since we will need to collect our fees from the family. You should be totally honest with the agency at all times, as they have been instrumental in finding you a job and you may want to have their help again.

This is the point a formal contract or agreement should be drawn up. This should set out clearly the extent of your duties and free time, the length of stay, wages, House guidelines for the au pair and the amount of notice which must be given on either side, and what will happen in the event of sickness. If the family has had a bad experience with a previous au pair, they might want to list acceptable reasons for disciplinary measures, their house rules to the au pair (i.e verbal warning in first instance, written warning and finally dismissal) such as unsatisfactory dress standards, unreliable timekeeping, after-hours behaviour which might harm the reputation of the employee, etc. the reasons for immediate dismissal are usually theft, drunkenness and philandering with the boss or his friends. Leaving prematurely is not to be recommended, since the family will also sign in good faith, and the contract should be maintained by both parties until it is mutually desirable to terminate it.