Au Pair Care Reviews

(based on 1 review)

56 of 107 people found this review helpful

Check the Facebook group Aupair Care - Rematch Au Pairs to avoid

Please be very diligent in vetting Au Pairs especially ones in the rematch pool. Be very worry of believing Au Pair Care Local Area Director if you decide to end an aupair's assignment and not rematch. Our aupair (21 years old,from Manizales, Colombia, Advanced Swimmer, Cared for two 8y olds one w/special needs) whom we took the step of ending her assignment as of 12/25/2018 due to:
(1) Ongoing lying through the last day of work, which she eventually admits to whenever we verify. Examples: kids' feeding/meals preparations, amount of screen time for kids when we are away, contacting the DMV to schedule driving test, her whereabouts, personal car use/mileage reporting, use of our personal items and belongings in the house, planning and scheduling for her education classes, and performing tasks related to her child care duties. This overall problem area has been a daily challenge for our family given that our special needs child can not "re-tell" what happens when we are not around.
(2) Carelessness with child care duties. This includes letting our special needs child step out of the house while the Au Pair was inside the house tending to other things, caught on our home security system, missing morning bus drop off, and missing bus pick up. It also includes ongoing and constant use of the cellphone for personal calls and texting while on childcare duty at home and away (public parks and public places with the kids), despite our many requests to her to discontinue this. The most recent incident was on the last day of work while supervising our special needs daughter at our local park. This specific incident was witnessed by 12 adults who were present at the time.
(3) Ongoing forgetfulness of daily items related the kids.
(4) Clear lack of interest in connecting or bonding with our kids. She simply seemed disinterested at all times.
(5) The Au pair's unusually poor English skills made it particularly challenging to communicate verbally. Much of the daily basics had to be communicated in writing and translated over text/googling. We are surprised this Au Pair met the basic proficiency standard of spoken English required by the State Department. How is it possible for a clear requirement of the program to be neglected by this Agency.
(6) Lack of interest in learning about the American culture, a pillar of the aupair program.
After informing the Local Area Director of our decision of ending the aupair assignment as well as our lack of interest in continuing the program, she refused to listen to any of our reasons for ending the assignment so we resorted to sending her the above reasons in an email along with a statement indicating that we understand that it is ultimately the choice of Aupair Care to rematch or not to rematch a candidate, but that we felt obliged to share with them the above information and advise Aupair Care not to rematch this candidate for the reasons stated above, and in particular with families whose kids have special needs or are not yet verbal. And that we are available any time for Aupair Care or other families to contact us for any questions regarding this candidate.
This next morning, the Area Director asked us to unlock our side gate to allow her to visit the Aupair for a meeting (the Aupair lives in the in law unit on our property). Four minutes later, she walked out through the same side gate with the aupair with her luggage fully packed with her room cleared including her belongings in the main house while keeping our house keys, cellphone sim card and who knows what else. To make things worse, as captured on our security cameras, the area director was cheering perfect repeatedly in a celebratory tone in front of our front door. Her voice is very loud and clear in the video.
To our knowledge this Aupair has already been allowed to rematch as we have been contacted by a family that found us through an online search. So much for the agency's care about kids' safety and wellbeing

In summary, I would not recommend Au Pair Care to a friend.