Au pair agency questions

I did not enjoy my experience with Cultural Care au pair and while I am just one person I want to share that with you. I am not sure if it was the agency or the specific au pair that I ended up with but it was not a good experience. First, this a huge business so the agency is interested in making money first and foremost. I did not end up with my first choice because she failed the English test and couldn't get a visa. I was late to the process so there were no other au pairs available and I was told that I couldn't match with anyone else because they had reached capacity with au pairs and families in the Bay area. Later, I was matched with a young woman from Argentina who had ended her first year in the states and wanted to stay another year. Since she was already in country, and supposedly great, I decided to match with her. The local match specialist vouched for her. But in hindsight I should have been much more curious about why she had to move on to another family at the last minute herself; why her original host family chose not to continue with her even though she wanted to stay; and why they required her to check off a list of completed chores everyday (I first thought this was horrible and later found out why they did that). 

It turned out that she was interpersonally quite pleasant and also had no intention of doing any work. She chose me because I only have one child in preschool and she didnt' want to have to care for a younger child all day as she had been doing previously. She did absolutely NOTHING. She painted her nails and stayed in her room and came out to eat the dinners I prepared. 

You may not be getting any bites because a lot of these young women view being an au pair as an opportunity to go to the US and perfect their English. Most have zero childcare experience. For me, it was a TOTAL waste of money, time, and energy. I ended up having to cook and clean up after her and she took the role of "host mom" very seriously, meaning I was her host and she was here to be nice to me but not to care for my child. I am a single mother and I didn't need another person to clean up after. I hated every minute of the experience. 

Re: the money, you can always pay the au pair more than the weekly minimum if you'd like to. And although everyone's experience is different, I would say that if you need a nanny for your kids get one. An au pair is not a nanny (although many au pairs work out very well). I am SOOO glad that two months of her living with us is over. 

Not sure about the high decline rate (but would suspect it has to do with what you’re asking, not with the agency / agencies themselves), but I just wanted to comment that I hope you’re not considering going with an agency that doesn’t comply with CA (or Federal) labor laws - it wasn’t clear from your post.  Good luck.  

I believe Au Pair In America's rates are the result of a lawsuit (unsure of the details). Not sure what the issue is with Cultural Care - we have always used Au Pair Care and had success. They only let you interview 3 people at a time, so the process feels slightly more manageable.

we are having an au pair come next month. we are using aupaircare but i looked on cultural care and aupairinamerica as well. we also had a much harder time than expected finding someone. as to the california law, I believe it's somewhat of a gray area and au pair in america was sued and they settled. i don't know if the other agencies will be sued, but hopefully not, as the minimum wage rule doesn't make sense when you pay for room and board in the bay area ( but there are no guarantees). i guess it depends how risk averse you are but we decided not to worry about that. 

my best tip is to reach out to au pairs who just got onto the site, once someone good has been on for a few days they will be speaking to other families and be less responsive. we only reached out to people the first or second day they were added to the site and starting actually getting responses. i did find that for whatever reason we got the most rejections from cultural care and aupaircare candidates seemed more interested in talking. i have no idea why this would be. good luck! it's not a fun process. I have heard that for some reason it's much harder this year than it ever has been to find au pairs 

Want to echo we had a dreadful experience with Au Pair Care and our au pair. Much like the first response, our au pair has zero interest in taking care of children, despite all our support mechanisms to help her get up to speed. We had to ask her to leave within the first 60 days. We had a 1st and 4th grader, and we weren't even using the person's work for the full 45 hours we were allowed to ask of her. This person asked for a lot of our care and resources but couldn't remember that she needed to make lunches daily for our children. We tried a lot of strategies to help her and set her up for success. She was 23 and would ask us for rides to BART despite a bus line outside our house that goes to BART stations in Oakland. She wouldn't respect our COVID limits despite telling her in advance what they might be and even offering her the chance to choose not to come if that didn't work for her. 
We realized that our kids' past sitter was only marginally more expensive than the au pair, didn't live with us as a sponge, and genuinely cares for our kids. We'd much prefer to pay a person who takes their job seriously. Both people are exactly the same age (22), so it wasn't an age-maturity issue. 
Further, we found the agency liaison mostly unhelpful. We know people who have had positive experiences with au pairs, but when considering if we'd do it again with a different person, we've realized the risk of a self-interested person wasn't worth it. 

Hi there, not sure about the cost differences between Au Pair in America and Cultural Care but to answer some of your other questions:

--typically it does take some months to find an au pair (we are welcoming our 4th au pair in about a month and each time it has taken me a few months to find the right person) so I don't think that is personal to you, but sort of just the way the matching process works honestly

--it is quite common to reach out to several au pairs and have many of them decline (in my experience personally it was either because they didn't want our family b/c we have three kids or because they were already speaking to several other families at the time) again I would not take this personally per se I think it is just a common situation where host mom/dad reaches out and the au pairs decline even before they interview with you, even if your profile is great!

--it sounds like your schedule is totally reasonable so I would not worry about that!

--I would just keep moving forward with reaching out, either on CC or Au Pair in America, and eventually you will find enough au pairs to interview and as long as you click with someone then you can move forward - again this process can take 2-3 months sometimes to find the right match in my experience

--One thing I would caution is that these girls have MINIMAL childcare experience - it is more like they have been babysitters but not real nannies. So if you are looking for someone more like a nanny (a lot of childcare experience, knows how to help take care of the house, cook etc) I would look at a nanny instead of au pair. These are young women who typically have little experience and they can help with the kids and are great for flexibility but it is NOT a nanny (coming from someone who has had both professional nannies and 4 years of au pairs). With that said: AP can be wonderful, it can be great for the family, but just to have the right expectation. 

Best of luck!!

I wanted to reply because everyone seemed pretty negative about AuPairs! But I am about to welcome our third. There are pluses and minuses to having an AuPair. Pluses: Flexible schedule! Our AuPair works for 1 hour in the morning to get the kids out the door and dropped off at school, and then picks them at after school until 6 or later for a date night and sometimes on Saturdays. I don't think it would be so easy to find a nanny who could work those hours and be as flexible. We never have to hire a nighttime sitter because generally she can flexible and work whichever evening we need her to.

Minuses: You have to provide room & board (we have a separate in-law apartment so they really have their own space and only join us for dinner 1-2x/week.) Car insurance, phone, etc also need to get factored into the cost. You definitely save money vs a full time nanny, but if you could find someone who was willing to work the hours you wanted maybe it would be cheaper. If you are going with an AuPair from South America you should be prepared to spend some $ on driving lessons. 

The CA Labor Laws do not apply to live in AuPairs, Cultural Care is following all relevant laws and regs. The only state that has changed their requirement on this is MA and apparently that is why the other company changed their rules, to align across all states. At least that is what I heard. I think there is a chance that the law could change here and you would have to pay minimum wage to the AuPair but that is not the case at this point.