Information on becoming an Au Pair

Being an Au Pair opens up a wide range of life and work experiences.
Perhaps you are a gap year student looking to travel or improve your English skills? Whatever your aims, the opportunity to discover the United Kingdom while at the same time enjoying the comfort and security of family life, is uniquely rewarding.
This is a great opportunity to improve your English, gain a qualification in English, learn and build essential skills, visiting the Uk’s top tourist attractions, as well as, above all, have great fun!

What is a host family?

A host family is a family who are looking for help with their day to day activities of life at home including childcare. A host family will welcome you into their home, provide you with your own room, access to all amenities, share their everyday life with you, ensure that you are well looked after and share most experiences with you.

Once you have made the decision to become an Au Pair and you have supplied the relevant information i.e. police checks, references etc, and have confirmed through our agency that a suitable host family has been found, it is a good idea to communicate with your new host family as much as possible probably through e-mail before your arrival so that you can both get to know each other better.

Communication with your host family is the key to success in having a good, close relationship with your new host family. If you can let your host family know as much as possible about yourself and your family, your likes and dislikes, and places of interest that you would like to see in the UK.

A lot of Au Pairs email over photos of experiences that you have had with children, also attaching a letter describing yourself as much as possible.

Once you have met your host family it is advisable to still keep up good communication with your host family on arrival.
If speaking the English language is causing a slight problem in understanding each other then write what you want to say down on paper and get your host family do the same.

Offer help as often as possible with your host family and make friends with the child/children immediately by playing with them, helping give them a bath, reading them stories etc.
Your host family will let you know what your duties include if they haven’t already done so or just re -confirm the duties and show everything you need to know.

Every Au Pair should have a daily written routine from the host family.

You may feel homesick in the first couple of weeks and might want to just stay in you bedroom when the your host family is all at home together.
This doesn’t always help matters! It can make you miss home life more.
The best way of dealing with homesickness is to contact your family, let them know that you are safe and well and involve yourself as much a you can with the daily life in the host family home.

The everyday hustles and bustles of life will make you feel cared and wanted by your host family; have some laughs and show photos of your family at home.

Being an au pair can be a very enjoyable experience for you and your host family and a great way of meeting new friends.

Here at BusyBee, we are happy to help and talk to you and your host family whenever you need to talk to us.
We offer a lot of support and advice to both our au pairs and host families.

We will also endeavour to encourage you to meet other au pairs in and around your area so that you can all get together and become friends.

Busybee Au Pairs do pride ourselves in providing a FREE service to Au Pairs in assisting you in finding a good host family safely.
We also provide many other benefits to all of our Au Pairs: Welcome Packs, introduce you to other Au Pairs, assist you in finding an English course, provide ongoing support to you in your placement with a host family, organised Au Pair trips etc.
We also have an excellent health and travel insurance available for every Au Pair at a cost of only a few pence per day.

Register with us today and we will arrange a Skype/ FaceTime/ WhatsApp call with you to talk through your Au Pair requirements further.