Hi all,

Does anyone have experiences of employing an English speaking au pair as a non-native speaking family living in CH? We live in the French speaking side in canton VD and have heard about the following obstacles in hiring an au pair for us (we would like to do this in the legal way):

1. Since none of my family members can currently speak French, we are not allowed to hire an English speaking au pair because she would not learn any French at our home (isn't this discrimination...!!?? 20+ % of the population of canton VD are foreigners...)
2. Is the au pair allowed to live outside of our home? Since our home doesn't have an extra bedroom, we would rent a room in a shared accommodation. Is this kind of solution OK?

I would also appreciate it if someone could pass on some good links for getting au pairs to CH from an English speaking country. Also, any links to finding shared accommodation in Lausanne area would be appreciated

Best,

Jan

Could you hire her as a nanny?

Welcome to the Forum.

In this post there are a couple of links giving Info about au pair rulings.
Links to accomodation sites are in the Market Place adverts for Homes in a Sticky at the beginning of the Page.

You cannot yet advertise there yourself as you don't qualify yet. Read the rules on this and check out a few other parts of the Site you'll be finding your way around on here in no time. An Introduction would be nice (in the Introductions Forum) if you are another member who never seems to go to bed.

A nanny & an Au Pair are completley different in terms of employment. Au Pair is a cheap mothers (or fathers) helper a nanny is a professional child carer. The difference in the amount paid is a couple of thousand or so a month.

Nanny's are not au-pairs. Nanny's go through years of courses to become a nanny, they have qualifications and experience, and because of this they demand higher wages.

Why don't you employ someone who speaks a little english, but not fluent, somone from the philippines for instance? Also look on www.greataupair.com as they have loads of aupairs looking for jobs.

You can hire anyone without any problems as long as they have EU 14+2 passport. You both just sign a contract and the person gets an L permit and AHV number. This however might be a problem, since most of these are rather interested in positions in US or Canada. I agree with you, not allowing non native speakers to hire an au pair IS a discrimination, especially that none of them is really interested in learning züridütsch.

Employing an EU citizen is the easiest but you stil have to comply with age & language requirements for the person to be employed as an Au Pair.

No, you don't have to. I know that for sure because I have done it myself. Since this is standard employment contract, than no language rules have to be observed. I am not sure about an age, but I guess that standard rules apply here.

I am also looking for an au pair, and was hoping to find another family to 'share' her with as I'll only need her several days a week. Live-out is our only option as well, so might be a possibility to find shared accomodation in any case, whether we share the same au pair or each find our own. Sound interesting?

Au pair in Switzerland is a special term reserved for those coming on Au pair work permits. These are restrictive as mentioned below and the employer has obligations such as paying for language courses.

EU citizens do not need a work permit and do not, therefore, fall under the Swiss classification of Au pair.

What you guys and gals are talking about is hiring a servant, personal assistant, mother's help, or, if you're talking typical Au pair salaries, possible a slave .

Your Au-Pair has to stay in your house. This is the point of being an AP. If you want someone to live-out then hire a Nanny but it would be very expensive and you want to hire an AP because it is cheaper.

I think you have to first look at whether an au pair is for you with the bureaucracy. What other child care facilities are available locally. I don`t know how much you have looked into this, but:-

You cannot employ an au pair from an English speaking country, if your family language is English.

You cannot employ a french speaking au pair, since you are in the French part of Switzerland. The reason for this is the AU Pair scheme is a cultural exchange program.

When employing an au pair, you are restricted, by age, country of origin, have to provide health insurance, pay the social costs for the au pair, make sure that the au pair attends a recognised language course and attends a minimum number of hours per week.

We paid our au pair more than CHF 1000/month and paid her tax, social, language and medical costs.

Medical insurance can be sourced from outside of Switzerland, since it is a temporary contract.

It can be done, but it is a pile of bureaucracy. Also note that the cost of an au pair cannot be fully offset against your tax return.


Good luck. telandy

You are right!

I'm going to be AP for a family in Aargau and we are still trying to figure it out about the insurance, the health one...lots of papers. I'm romanian and the family is german living in Switzerland.
Janne should be careful especially on the language part and the other restrictions. The Swiss government has decided to limit the number of residence permits for Au Pairs from Non-EU countries. In some Swiss cantons (like the canton of Zurich, as far as I know) it is no longer possible to obtain the necessary residence and work permit for 2010 if the future au pair is a NON-EU citizen! The age range is from 17 to 30 years and the native language of the Au Pair may not be the language mainly spoken in the part of Switzerland where he/she is an Au Pair.

Use this company in Germany, it is special a pair health insurance and is far superior than anything we could find in Switzerland.

www.klemmer-aupair.com It doesn`t mention on the website, but they will (have covered) our au pair in Switzerland-

It covers deportation, pregnacy, extra care if the au pair is sick etc.

From a Swiss point of view an au pair contract is temporary and therefore non swiss medical assurance is allowed.


The company will have to state in writing that their health insurance meets the minimum Swiss Health Insurance requirement, which they did. It was accepted by our Gemeinde and the canton.

Thank you.
My Host Mom found an insurance for au-pairs and now we are trying to figure it out how to do it as we have some small issues.
http://www.caremed-travelinsurance.com/

It works with Klemmer - we have done it, but you will probably need to get the family to help you organizing it, even if you pay it.

Yes we are discussing it to see what we should do .

I employed English speaking au-pairs for about - hmmm, 5 years, in Lausanne area. It is true that we also speak french, but English was always the main language.

As long as the au-pair holds a UK passport, there has never been a problem; on the other hand, getting in a girl from the US, CA or (sarcastic here) heaven forbid, Australia, that is an other thing - work permit is a challenge.

You can definitely get her a room out of the house - most au-pairs will LOVE LOVE LOVE the independence; as long as she has a private, heated, with window room - you are legally fine. She is supposed to work about 35 hrs a week, room and board are included, tasks are mostly child-related (but some small house tasks are normal). Pocketmoney is in the 500.- CHF a month, with upper scale in the 800.-, plus AVS insurance (about 100.- per month), and employer's accident insurance (if I recall right, about 200.- yearly). It is kind to take some of the travel costs.
Note that income is low, because room and board is accounted for about 30.- a day; that means an additional 900.- a month in value; AVS is calculated on 900.- plus whatever pocket money you offer her.

If you do get an au-pair, make sure you give her before hand a detailed list of the expected tasks - ideally on a time schedule. They are great girls, and I had a great time with them - but they don't have experience, so you have to tell them what you expect, ad when...

www.greataupair.com is a good site for searching. 3 months of subscription cost around 80-90 USD, and give you access to a lot of profiles. You select, write, and phone/meet the relevant girls.

An AP could be a live-out also and who wouldn't like the independence of course .
But the family will have to pay more for the accomodation. I know the rents are high in Switzerland so instead of paying a separate place for an AP then she should hire a nanny but of course it depends on what Janne really needs for her family.
Also Janne will have a lot of taxes to pay plus the AP wage so I hope she will afford it.
This is about making the best thing for her family...what she really needs...

You are very lucky if you got away with it...

May be they have changed the rules, but you cannot get away with employing an English speaking au pair if you are an english speaking family. It would be rejected in the German part of Switzerland at least.

See extract below. The mother tongue of the family (Mother or Father) should be different to that of the au pair.

Begriff und Grundsatz

Aupair-Angestellte sind junge Ausländer/innen, die in die Schweiz kommen um Land und Leute kennenzulernen und ihre Sprachkenntnisse zu erweitern. Sie sind nicht deutscher Muttersprache und sind zwischen 18 und 25 Jahre alt. Die Hausfrau oder der Hausmann ist nicht gleicher Muttersprache wie der oder die Au-pair-Angestellte. Sie wohnen in einer Familie mit Kindern (unter 16 Jahre) und helfen halbtags im Haushalt bei leichten Arbeiten und bei der Kinderbetreuung mit. Anspruchsvolle Tätigkeiten, namentlich auch die eigentliche Kindererziehung und Fremdsprachen- und Nachhilfeunterricht von Kindern, sind ausgeschlossen. Ihr Arbeitspensum beträgt höchstens 30 Stunden pro Woche (in der Regel von Montag bis Samstag). Die übrige Zeit soll ihrer sprachlichen Aus- und Weiterbildung dienen. Sie erhalten Unterkunft, Kost und ein Taschengeld. Die Anstellung ist auf ein Jahr beschränkt und kann nicht verlängert werden.