Anonymous wrote:OP here - just an update - we ended up re-matching very quickly with an au pair in Pennsylvania. She had been removed from her family for her safety and was staying with her LCC, who thought she was great and had handled her bad family situation well given the circumstances. She arrived yesterday and seems great so far.

Glad to hear it! Seems like a win-win for you both.

OP here - just an update - we ended up re-matching very quickly with an au pair in Pennsylvania. She had been removed from her family for her safety and was staying with her LCC, who thought she was great and had handled her bad family situation well given the circumstances. She arrived yesterday and seems great so far.

One caution about rematch: There have been, in our experience, plenty of candidates as long as you don't need infant qualified, but they tend to go very quickly so you have to move fast. And I am terrible about picking in a move-fast situation. Both times we had to rematch with our out-of-country AP (one over driving and the other over a poor personality fit), we rematched again a second time immediately because I missed something MAJOR in the AP that ended up making it not work for us. That said, the second time was a charm in both cases, one of which was an extension AP who wanted to do her second year in a diff part of the country (she had been in Ohio), and the second we went out of country. So it can work. just know that it is extremely stressful for everyone - the AP is stressed about finding a family ASAP so that she isn't sent home, and multiple families are competing for the same in-transition APs. that said, this time of year there shouldn't be as much competition as there was in the fall, the time we rematched both times, so hopefully it wil be better. It can be helpful to make a list of your must-haves and stick to it (and double-check against it before you match), so that you can be sure you are not missing something major (in one case we never double checked that sthe AP didn't smoke - she had checked "non-smoking" but we didn't query her about this, and it turned out she was a huge smoker; in the other case, the AP had been driving for six years but I didn't spend enough time querying her about her driving so she showed up and wasn't sure which was the gas and which was the brake pedal - ugh!).

Anonymous wrote:For me it was very quick as I was looking for an AP who also was in transition (less than a week). If you look outside the US its going to be 6 weeks plus because she has to get her visa and go through the training. In my experience getting someone in transition worked out well because she was unhappy before with her host family an was eager to make it work with us. Good luck!

Agree. We have rematched twice and both times did not have a gap in child care. Each time we were able to interview several APs who were in rematch themselves, in person, immediately. We realize we are lucky, but that is a benefit to living in a dense area like DC - lots of APs in the area, or at least a short bus ride away (e.g. NY/NJ). By contrast, a friend in Colorado took much longer to rematch because there just weren't as many local APs to choose from - they had to Skype-interview rematch APs from all over the country, and it was much harder to make an intelligent choice that way.

Good luck to you - it is stressful, especially if you really liked your departing AP, but there will be other good APs out there, and hopefully you can meet a few in person relatively soon.

For me it was very quick as I was looking for an AP who also was in transition (less than a week). If you look outside the US its going to be 6 weeks plus because she has to get her visa and go through the training. In my experience getting someone in transition worked out well because she was unhappy before with her host family an was eager to make it work with us. Good luck!

Our au pair has to leave the AP program and return home suddenly and so we, the host family, will be going into rematch. We are planning on looking at rematch au pairs as well as new au pairs from outside the US. Just wondering if anyone can give me an idea of how long it took them to find a rematch au pair. I'm sure it can vary quite a bit, but I wasn't sure how much I should concentrate on APs outside the US if I might find a rematch au pair right away.