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FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The purpose of this page is to answer all your questions regarding this site and our services.
About Au Pairs and Nannies
‘Au Pair’ literally means ‘on a par’ or ‘equal to’, and in general usage denotes a young person travelling to live as a houseguest with a host family in a foreign country. There are rules and regulations regarding the rights of different nationalities to visit other countries. For further links and information please see Useful Information.
The UK Home Office site reads as follows:
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/aupairs/eligibility/
In order to come to the United Kingdom as an au pair you must:
be single;
have no dependants;
be aged between 17 and 27;
plan to stay in the United Kingdom as an au pair for no more than two years;
be able to maintain and accommodate yourself without claiming public funds;
be a national of one of the following countries:
Andorra;
Bosnia-Herzegovina;
Croatia;
Faroe Islands;
Greenland;
Macedonia;
Monaco;
San Marino;
Turkey; and
plan to leave the United Kingdom when you complete your stay as an au pair.
Nationals of European Economic Area countries are not included in the official au pair scheme but are free to come to the United Kingdom as au pairs. If you are a Bulgarian or Romanian national you will need to apply for an accession worker card before you take work in the United Kingdom.
Source: http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/aupairs/eligibility/
Au Pair Plus
This term is generally used to define an au pair who undertakes duties in addition to helping with light housework and childcare for 25 hours per week. An au pair plus is not able to visit the UK under the official au pair scheme, but EEA citizens are generally free to come to the UK. Please see www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/ for more information. Please note that if your ‘au pair’ is paid over £105 per week (this is the PAYE and national Insurance threshold for the 2008/9 tax year) then tax and National Insurance liabilities may be incurred. If you are unsure please speak to the appropriate government department, or to a professional advisor. Universal Au Pairs is unable to give advice in relation to employment law, workers rights, or tax matters.
Nanny
A Nanny is a person who through experience and/or qualification is able to take sole charge of children for an extended period of time; whilst the parents are out at work, for example. Nannies may live-in with the family, or live-out in their own accommodation commuting to the family residence in order to work.
Universal Au Pairs actively recruits au pairs. It is possible that some of the au pair members have the required skills and experience to fulfil a nanny role. We recommend that families take great care in assessing the competence and reliability of any person they intend to engage who will take sole charge of children.
Please note that all employees are entitled to receive a written statement from their employer within two months of starting work. Please see www.adviceguide.org.uk and http://www.businesslink.gov.uk
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UK Tax & National Insurance
The pocket money paid to an au pair under the official au pair scheme is currently a minimum of £60 per week, and therefore falls under the threshold for tax and national insurance. However, as many nationalities are able to visit the UK and undertake roles which are not official au pair placements, it will be necessary to check requirements regarding living and working in the UK, and also tax and National Insurance liabilities where more hours are worked. The PAYE and National Insurance Threshold for tax year 2008/9 is £105 per week. You may be interested in reading the article relating to nannies and domestic staff at http://business.timesonline.co.uk, which was published in The Times Newspaper on Saturday June 2 2007. Please consult http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ or your professional advisor for more information.
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UK National Minimum Wage (NMW)
The following is an extract from the dti publication ‘The National Minimum Wage and the childcare sector’. Follow the link to access the full publication.
Au pairs and nannies
Au pairs and nannies are entitled to the NMW.
However, there is an exemption for such workers who:
• live in the family home where they are working, and;
• are treated as a member of the family, who share in the tasks and leisure activities of the household and in particular with regard to the provision of accommodation and meals; and
• are not liable for any charge in respect of the accommodation or meals.
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Holiday Entitlement
To calculate statutory holiday entitlement we suggest that you visit www.businesslink.gov.uk. There is an interactive tool which will help you to calculate annual leave entitlement.
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Childcare Element of Working Tax Credit
The government has schemes that assist parents in paying for childcare. In order to benefit from these schemes parents need to utilise registered childcare facilities. A summary of options is available on the HMRC website. There is also a link from the Ofsted website to a ‘Guide to registration: the voluntary part of the childcare register (Word format)’, which takes a potential applicant through the process and fee structure. Both these sites have contact points where specific questions may be addressed.
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Using the Site
Payment is made via either the family member or au pair member page. Payment by credit or debit card is accepted. If the system rejects your payment, please confirm that all of the details have been entered correctly. If the problem persists, please contact your card provider.
Passwords are issued automatically once membership has been granted. The email containing confirmation of your username and your password will be sent to the email address on your membership form. The automated passwords are numeric for ease of use, so we recommend that you edit the password to something memorable and secure. Once logged in you will be able to edit your password and your membership form via the ‘My Account’ tab that will appear as the top right menu.
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If the password does not arrive within 30 minutes of your membership commencing please check in your junk email box and spam filter both on your client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express), and also on your online email access. We have found that AOL, Hotmail, Btinternet, and Yahoo members occasionally experience this problem. If you are unable or unsure as to how you check your spam and junk mail then contact us and we will be pleased to help.
If you have lost your password please use the ‘Lost Password’ feature on the homepage next to the Login prompt. A message will appear on the website confirming if the password has been sent successfully. The new password will supersede all previously issued passwords.
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If you are using Advanced Au Pair Search, and are unable to find enough close au pair matches try relaxing your search criteria. Many au pair membership forms are incomplete and will therefore be excluded from the returned search results based on your criteria. Often, you can also negotiate with the au pairs as to the start and end dates, and also the preferred location. Many au pair members put London as the preferred location as they are under the impression that it is where the UK begins and ends. We have many examples of au pairs happily accepting alternative locations to be with a family they like.
We also recommend that you read the section Advanced Au Pair Search Help.
You can upload pictures and other attachments with your membership form. Please remember that only the first attachment will be seen on the web site, so you will probably want to make this a general photograph showing a head and shoulders shot (au pair) or family group (family). Any other attachments you add will be seen by anyone to whom you send a link to your membership form. You may want to hold back some personal details such as driving licence or passport information until you are sure as to the identity of the recipient. Please ensure that attachments are saved as common files (e.g. JPG), that you use common roman characters with no accents (e.g. me1, me2, etc), and that there are no spaces in the filename.
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Families can control the information displayed on the site and published to au pairs in a number of ways.
1. You are free to enter as much or as little information as you like. However, the more you provide, the more positive interest you are likely to receive from au pairs. The first attachment you add to your membership form will appear on the site. We never publish your address, email address, or telephone numbers. You must 'Publish on Site' in order for au pairs to see your form and for au pairs to be able to reply and send you messages. The 'Publish on Site' switch is located towards the bottom of the membership form.
2. You can share your full form and attachments with potential au pairs by forwarding a copy of the link to your form as sent to you when you first become a member. This link is sent to you again every time you click the 'Submit' button at the bottom of your membership form, irrespective of any changes you may or may not have made to the form at that time.
3. You are free to use the internal communication within Universal Au Pairs until you and the au pair are happy to exchange email and/or telephone details.
4. You are free to unsubscribe at any time.
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Tips on Finding a Suitable Match
This is a very competitive environment and the au pairs have a wide choice of families on this and other au pair sites. Here are some suggestions that families have found useful:
1. Make sure that your membership form is complete, and has a nice photograph attached. If you leave information vague or unclear you may find that potential au pairs choose to communicate with families who have been more clear and definitive in describing the position available. Remember that the au pair has a wide choice of options available in terms of both whether or not they travel as an au pair, and through other au pair sites.
2. We recommend that you offer a fair amount of weekly pocket money for the position. Of course, terms of the position will be negotiable once you are talking to interested parties about the fine detail, but if one simply advertises ‘salary negotiable’ there is a risk that au pairs will feel that they will have to battle to get a fair amount of pocket money before they have even entered in to a discussion with you, got to know you, or found out if the position is really of interest.
3. Compose an interesting initial contact email, highlighting the key features of the au pair position available, and inviting potential au pairs to ask questions about it. Be positive. Focus on the areas that appear to match, and point these out to the au pair as the reasons you have selected them for intial contact. Once you have a positive dialogue going on, you will both be more inclined to be flexible, and therefore more likely to find a suitable candidate.
4. Using 'search' and 'advanced search' compile a list of possible candidates and save these to 'Favourites'. We recommend that you cast your net as wide as possible. On many occasions the au pair’s requirements regarding start date, location, etc may be negotiable.
5. When writing to au pairs compose your email and use 'copy and paste' to save time in writing to your selected list. You can then personalise the salutation. It is not unusual for a family to write to 100 or more potential au pairs during the search process.
6. Many au pairs on the site will be in communication with families already, and may also have joined other au pair sites so it is important to contact as many au pairs as you feel may match your criteria.
7. Monitor the site regularly and contact new au pairs as they join where these are possible matches. Typically we have had over 300 new au pairs joining every month, and we run permanent advertising campaigns across Europe. New au pairs are allocated the next sequential reference number and so appear at the top of the au pair search, and you can also search the more recent members using the advanced search feature.
8. If you are not ab;e to get your required aupair and you require a fully managed agency to do the work for you, contact our sister agency (www.1st classnanies.co.uk) which sources au pairs from partner agencies overseas (so these are not the same au pairs that appear on 1st class Au Pairs) . We will surely find you the right match
9. It is also worth noting that not all au pairs have immediate access to the Internet, and may only check messages periodically when the opportunity arises via, for example, a friend’s computer or an Internet café.
Good luck with your search…
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To Remove Your Details
Families and au pairs - if you are no longer actively looking for a match we recommend and request that you temporarily remove your details from the site. This will assist other members in seeing who is still available, and will prevent you receiving unwanted communications.
To remove your details:
Log in to the site
Go to the ‘My Account’ tab
Go to ‘Amend My Details’
Select ‘Publish? No’. For au pairs this is near the top of the form, for families it is near the bottom.
Submit your form using the button at the bottom - your details will no no longer be visible. You can reverse this process at any time.
To Unsubscribe and permanently remove your details:
Log in to the site
Go to the ‘My Account’ tab
Go to 'Unsubscribe' and follow the instructions. Your membership will be cancelled and your full details will be deleted within 24 hours. If you wish to rejoin you will be able to create a new membership at any time.
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