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[quote=Anonymous]Good Luck - and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

We weren't looking for special needs in our rematch a few months ago, but needed infant qualified.  Just be aware that any discussions at any point that referred to a "pool of candidates in the US looking for a new placement" didn't refer to infant qualified (or I'm sure special needs *experienced*, though you'll probably find special needs *willing*).  Be aware upfront that just because a candidate is special needs *willing* doesn't mean they have ANY actual experience with special needs kids.  There doesn't seem to be a category for special needs experienced in APIA - other than the "extraordinaire" category, which costs more.

See if you can talk to your LCC before calling rematch about what's available in the rematch "pool".  Just get a sense of what's available.  We wanted an infant-qualified driver and wound up having to bring in a candidate from outside the country - so we had to cover about 6 weeks of child care between us and family we were able to bring in.  We wound up taking an au pair with much lower language skills than we would have otherwise considered.  You might have to compromise on some of the things you emphasized before to get a good match now.

The driver issue was big too - we said we wanted a driver, and one of the candidates they were trying to push us toward had an accident with her first host family, had gone to a second host family that didn't let her drive, and she had apparently gotten sick of not being able to drive so she wanted to rematch.  We weren't interested in having someone whose last experience driving in the US was a few months ago (with the first family) and ended with a car accident.  Once we said that, all of the otherwise qualified rematch candidates suddenly had driving issues.

I'd put out feelers with your LCC, and - while I don't know details about an additional diagnosis - if you really like the Au Pair you have now and she'd be amenable, consider getting her additional training to deal with the new diagnosis rather than changing au pairs.  I don't think there are that many special needs *experienced* au pairs out there to choose from, and your current au pair is already emotionally invested with you and your child.  Hopefully by the time your year is up, you'll have a good handle on the kind of au pair you need for next year, and can add that criteria then.

That advice changes, of course, if this is just the straw that broke the camel's back and rematch has been looming for a while.[/quote]

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