Safety issues with Au Pair
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Anonymous
| We are in rematch and I am very worried about leaving my au pair in the house alone. I don't feel safe at all. I am told that I have to house her for 2 weeks. She is not working. I'm scared for the safety of our house as she is very passive aggressive. I've voiced my concerns to the LCC, but she says I have to house her. Has anyone had similar situations? What are my rights? Do I have to quit the program? |
Anonymous
| Why isn't she working if she is living with you? You can still get child care from her. If you don't trust her around the kids, I would voice that to the company. You shouldn't have to house someone who is not a safe guest. If there are real safety concerns, you should be specific with the rep. |
Anonymous
+1 if there is a real safety concern bring it up to the LCC. My sister had one of her APs removed within a day. |
Anonymous
| If it is really bad pay for a hotel. You can ask agency to pay and they may remove her faster. |
Anonymous
How? |
Anonymous
| OP, push the LCC to house her and tell the agency about your specific safety concerns. Just don't take no for an answer. |
Anonymous
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If she can't stay with you, the LCC MUST house her, so hence the push back. You need to go over your LCCs head to your program director and tell her the AP must be out by the close of business today.
We had an AP that we caught stealing from us. She was at the LCCs house before supper that same day. Then the LCC didn't trust her either and had to take her along everywhere she went, including to her day job. Sucks for the LCC but they know that when they sign up. |
Anonymous
| The LCC said she could not take her. I thought it was their responsibility also. |
Anonymous
| can you book her a bed at a hostel? |
Anonymous
They just dont WANT to take her. Push the issue! |
Anonymous
+1 it is part of her job. Go over her head. I'm the pp whose sister had her ap removed same day. She called the LCC and said 'take her or I'm pressing charges.' |
Anonymous
This. It is NOT optional for the LCC, its a job REQUIREMENT. If she "can't" then she's in the wrong line of work and they will replace her with someone who can. |
Anonymous
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As a host mom, I always wonder about these situations. Mostly I wonder, "how badly did the host family handle this that they are now worried about retribution?". If you have a thief, drug user, or something of that nature-- that is one thing. But IMO the basic rule is that you (the host family) need to house the au pair during rematch. Not the LCC. The LCC is there to bail you out in the very rare truly bad circumstance that you have a really bad egg on your hands. Not simply because you've decided to move on. I get that this is uncomfortable... But there really is no reason to believe that your basic average AP (who didn't work out) is suddenly going to start beating your kids or destroying your stuff simply because you're in rematch. At least not if you have treated her respectfully through the rematching process.
I have rematched twice in my 6 years with the program. The first time was the AP's decision. The second was mine. I think all of this would go a lot better if Host Families would recognize that there are lots of APs out there who may be bad APs-- but that doesn't make them bad people. When I see posts like this one, I always wonder if the Host Family has lost sight of this. |
Anonymous
| As another host mom I have to agree with post 18:09. |
Anonymous
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We have rematched four times over the past nine years, and all but one of our rematches went very smoothly. In the smooth cases, the AP was going to a new family and was warned that she needed to be on best behavior for her rematch to go through. Two of the three continued to work for the nearly two weeks they were with us, and the third could have but she couldn't drive. The only time I was really worried - enough that I hid the knives, locked our bedroom door at night, and kept the children in our room, was when we had an unstable AP with whom we were rematching due to safety reasons and she was being sent home. I could not explain my fears with any kind of evidence to the Lcc enough to have her removed (I have posted about this ap elsewhere - she was she one who refused to go home even when ordered by the agency, and we were dealing with an inept Lcc who didn't know us), but I wasn't taking any chances.
Op, if your ap is rematching then it's unlikely she will do anything to jeopardize her chances of finding a new family. If she is being sent home, that is another story, because already the agency has agreed there's a serious problem and she has less at stake in doing the right thing. In this case, I would demand she be removed. I wish I had done so those years ago rather than giving myself that kind of worry. Good luck |