Anonymous wrote:You still will have to pay her per the program rules, which works out to about $20,000 per year. That's a lot of money for 10 hours a week of care. I hope you don't mind paying that to help out your friends. Its $38 per hour!

It's $20,000 just for the stipend, agency fees, and educational money. Then you have to feed her and house her at the very minimum. Cell phone, car, activities, etc. will be even more on top of that. I agree, if you seriously will only use her for 10 hours a week, I'm not sure this is the way to go about it.

You still will have to pay her per the program rules, which works out to about $20,000 per year. That's a lot of money for 10 hours a week of care. I hope you don't mind paying that to help out your friends. Its $38 per hour!

There are many agencies that do pre-match visas. Just shop around. You want an agency that is large enough to have a support network for her, with LCC and other au pairs, but you can look around for lower agency fees.

Any agency will bring her on. I think APIA and possible cultural care or others will give you a very slight discount for finding your own, but it will still be very expensive. Policies are also set by the state department, so you will have to pay her the stipend required and can use her for up to 45 hours. No, you cannot share with another family. The "Au pair" designation is very specific - it's not a program that has a whole lot of flexibility when you just want to bring someone over from another country.

We're interested in having the daughter of a family friend in Germany be our part-time au pair starting in Aug 2014. We just need an agency to handle the visa, paperwork and provide a social network for her. Any recommendations? Also, is sharing an au pair with another family ever allowed and how does it work? We have space for her to live with us but we only need her part-time (approx. 10 hrs per week) because our kids are in school.