Sorry op but you get what you pay for. You can’t even get a legit nanny for a day in this area for what you want to pay an Au pair for a week.

I did not realize that the agencies accepted hours counted that way. So basically the girls who basically just did a quick internship or volunteer stint at a kindergarten can basically go from 0 to hundreds of hours in a week. Wish they were more transparent about that.

Childcare hours are per child.
Your au pair worked 40 hours in a daycare with 6 kids. She counts 40 hours. The agency counts 40x6 = 240 hours.

Agreed. That said I've found some of the candidates to be extremely resistant to helping facilitate contact with any references...

Sometimes I get the impression that to get childcare numbers they multiply hours worked by the number of children watched during those hours. I really don't care about the total number of hours, but the incredibly inflated hours undermine trust.

I don't put a lot of stock in the references of the childcare numbers - I think this is largely the work of the in country agency folks trying to help girls meet technical requirements. I always try to find an actual parent reference and connect with that parent - they have typically been much more valuable than the head of a childcare center for example. I would rather have an AP who connected with a kid she babysat a dozen times that who worked 200 hours at a childcare center.

Anonymous wrote:Wouldn't surprise me at all. The childcare hours reported on the profiles seem very high across the board, and I've long wondered how they haven't been called into question when doing the reference checks. Once had a candidate tell us she had just reached her 200 hours, and then the reference check immediately thereafter came back with far, far more. Makes me suspect the agency itself was padding the hours.

Or the AP was only counting hours they really felt they worked and the agency counted any time they spent with children, even if they weren't really working. Yes, playing with the AP's sister's kids is experience, but it's also not working.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. The childcare hours reported on the profiles seem very high across the board, and I've long wondered how they haven't been called into question when doing the reference checks. Once had a candidate tell us she had just reached her 200 hours, and then the reference check immediately thereafter came back with far, far more. Makes me suspect the agency itself was padding the hours.

I agree that it's not unusual for prospective APs to pad their hours and/or references with false info. One of our APs confided that it was common practice and the APs were encouraged to do so by their rep/agency in their home country.

Not only do they give fake references when coming to th eUS, but also during rematch and if they want to be an AP for a second time.

I believe this is the norm with au pairs to be honest.

What about a nanny through an agency- all will have already been vetted to ensure they are eligible to work in the US. If budget isn't an issue, I'd choose nanny 100x over

OP here.

The frustrating thing is that (1) without fluency in the au pair's language, I'd be completely unable to check the references myself, so looking for another geographic region isn't an option; and (2) this isn't a matter of us being cheap--we're making a really genuine effort to treat our au pair fairly, including reimbursing her participation fee and paying above the minimum weekly stipend.

When we've searched for nannies, we've run into other issues--getting a notification from the nanny website that someone who had contact with us was removed for criminal background reasons, finding out that the nanny who assured us was in the country legally has no work authorization, etc.

We get this when agencies look the other way because they are more concerned about their bottom line. LCCs make pennies, it's HQ that is rolling in the dough

Maybe look at candidates from a different geographic region?

You get what you pay for it !

Has anyone had an issue with an au pair giving a fake reference? We just had a candidate torch herself by making up an email address for her reference (and it was extremely obvious that it was her, especially when she claimed the phone number for the preschool listed on the website didn't work anymore--plus the preschool had a different email address listed than the one she gave us, and the one she gave us was linked to her iPhone). Worst part of it was that I actually did contact some people from the preschool through facebook and they had really nice things to say about her. So lying was just completely unnecessary.

A previous candidate tried to get out of having us talk to her reference telling us that the reference didn't speak English (nevermind that I'd been speaking to the candidate in her native language for weeks...).

It's been frustrating to try to find candidates that don't actively lie to us and actually seem interested in cultural exchange. We can find one or the other but not both... At least the agency got on the situation right away and took it very seriously, but I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have a good level of fluency in that language.