The Role of your Area Director

What exactly does the area director do for the family and aupair. Sometimes there is some confusion as to our role. The Area Director is your link to the main office, we can be your confident and sounding board. We are here to assist you but we are also human and not a 24/7service.

THINGS WE DO:

·        We conduct an in-home interview when you apply to the program to go over the program details and check the spare room making sure the aupair room is equal to others in the home.

·         We call each host family and au pair within 48 hours of an au pair’s arrival into the home to welcome all and make sure everyone is safe and settled.

·        We conduct an Orientation Meeting within 2 weeks of your au pair’s arrival into the home to go over things like schedule, list of duties, discipline, house rules, education, driving, travel,and answer any questions you may have.

·         We call each host family and each au pair every month to check in and see how things are going and answer questions. Both host families and au pairs should make sure to call their Area Director back. It is important to keep an open dialog with the area director that way when problems arise we can help you.

·         We make ourselves available via phone and email during normal business hours to answer questions as they arise.

·         We conduct an in-home mediation in the event issues are not being resolved.

·         Email a monthly newsletter to host families and au pairs with pertinent announcements, tips and most importantly, details of the monthly au pair meeting event.

·         Organize and attend a monthly au pair meeting, to which au pairs are required to attend.

·         Organize and attend an annual Family Day event for all au pairs and host families to which you are required to attend.

THINGS WE DON'T DO:

·         Match you with your au pair. While Area Directors are available to offer general advice on interview tips etc, specific matching help should be addressed by your Matching Expert in the San Francisco head office.

·         Pick up your au pair from the airport. It is your job to welcome your au pair at your local airport.

*     For out-of-hours emergencies, you should call the emergency hotline number: 415-434-8788.

We want to ensure your year with an aupair is the best that it can be. We are here for you through the good times and the bad. The area director is your friend.

The role of the Area Director

What exactly does the area director do? Aupair Care has 200 + area directors around the country and our job is to be there for the host families and au pairs. I think the area director is a great resource for families and aupairs and I believe Aupair Care has some of the best area directors in the business hence the A+ rating the company has from the Better Business Bureau. I love my job, I get to meet interesting host families that live all across the city, from Gardner, to Leavenworth to Parkville. I cover the whole Metro. I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone of my Mid Town Urban life. I also very much enjoy all the au pairs, they come from all over the world. It is fascinating to meet other cultures and hear other languages. It can be tricky sometimes when doing a mediation with a family and aupair because there are cultural differences, but there in lies the challenge that I enjoy, especially when everything works out. It comes down to communication. We all need to communicate. If host family and au pair have trouble communicating then contact your area director. We are the neutral ones and we are here to help you. That is what I find is a huge benefit of having an aupair over a local nanny, there is support from a third party. The Area Director is in it with you, at least that is how I see it.

Our Au pair Experience (Part 1)

Having an au pair has been a great experience for us.  I grew up with au pairs starting when I was born until I was a teenager. We had 11 different girls  as I was growing up. Now that I am an adult I have also had many au pairs, we have had 8 girls to date. The difference between the au pairs  I grew up with and the au pairs my daughters are growing up with is that all of the au pairs I had as a child were all Norwegian. Back then there was no agency and there were no strict visa regulations. We brought Norwegian girls with us to be au pairs for a year. My family is from Norway and we lived in many places around the world and we hired au pairs in Norway and brought them with us to the country we were living in, Moscow, Washington DC and Vienna were our three main places where we lived. The greatest difference between having au pairs then and now is that there was no agency and no support for either the aupair or the family. I remember as a child some of the girls we had were not so good, they were homesick, or drank on the job or brought their boyfriends over while they were working and once we brought them to our family we were in a sense stuck with each other. We also had great girls during those years that I remember fondly and some of whom I am still in touch with.

So when my daughter was born I knew that having an au pair was the natural choice for us. It is flexible, enriching and an affordable option for childcare. I also wanted to bring an aupair over from Norway and carry on the tradition of my childhood. But I quickly found out that we live in a different world now with far more regulations and you cannot just hire someone in another country and bring them to America. My mother contacted an Au pair agency in Norway  (because I still had my heart set on a Norwegian girl)  and she found the partner company to Aupaircare. So when my daughter was born I contacted the San Fransisco office and the process of finding an aupair started. I met with my area director and she did our home interview and got us started on the process of finding an au pair. She was a wonderful area director and made me feel so comfortable with the whole process and I knew she would be there to help us through the year. So this is how our family came about hiring an aupair and adding to our new and extended family from around the world. And our first au pair was not Norwegian but we got a wonderful Danish girl.