We saw lapses in judgment and had been communicating them to the AD regularly. When things finally fell apart it was after a few big safety-related issues and multiple serious "you need to do better" talks, and ultimately I didn't trust her to care for our children. She was with us about 5 weeks total. |
Wow, PP, what an awful experience. I've heard a number of these horror stories from Au Pair Care, incidentally. Glad you've been happy since. |
Yet they are offended when the young women are called modern day indentured servants. One more reason wby the au pair provram needs tl be revamped. |
We moved to the DC area from another city where APC has more of the market share than here. We had great area directors there, but here in DC the area directors are spread out over a much larger geographic area because there isn't the same concentration of APs from APC as there are from APIA and CC. So I think the area directors have trouble being as effective. We are going to switch to APIA or CC next time around. (APC also just doesn't cater to customers on the east coast as well, e.g. they force you to purchase an expensive plane ticket from the training in NJ to nearby cities such as Boston or DC or Baltimore, rather than just having the APs take an Amtrak, which would be simpler, more comfortable, and a lot less expensive.) |
| At CC the Au pairs have to pay for their own ticket home if they don't complete their year. It sucks if they can't find a rematch family but I think if they are a good Au pair the LLC will work hard to find them a family. It's typically when the Au pair is let go for cause where they have limited help in rematch. We had an Au pair decide to go home and she found a flight home for about $500. Not great but if she had saved up from her 6 weeks with us she could easily cover it twice-over, plus her parents were happy to pay to get her back home which seemed to be part of the problem. |
Lol yeah our au pair who left early also had parents and a boyfriend encouraging her to give up and return home. I'm trying to figure out how to interview against this - I'd like to find parents who are encouraging when the au pair is homesick rather than enabling. |
The PP with the nightmare from APC here. We were in exactly the same boat - moved to DC from another state where we had had a fabulous AD through APC. But in the DC area, APC was horrible. It was such a lesson in the fact that an agency is only as good as its local coordinators, wherever you live. |
You'd be a responsible parent, right?? |