I get a lot of questions about what happens if you don’t like the family, you have to go home? No, you don’t! 🙂
So first of all that is why I mention everywhere that the matching process is really important and take your time finding the perfect family. No one wants to go through that phase of being frustrated, sad, anxious thinking what will happen and feeling exhausted from all this. I will say again, take your time finding the perfect family, don’t be afraid of saying no to 20 families or even 40 if you need to because you are going to ‘meet’ one (virtually) where you are going to know that you WANT THEM! You will immediately feel a kind of chemistry. Do not choose a location, choose a family! You can go to a place you love but have a family you don’t get along with and have problems all the time or you can stay with a family you love and have an awesome time in the States like I had for 2 years with the same family!
When you found a family you like, spend as much time getting to know them as you can before you leave. My example is that I got into the matching process in October, talked to 20 families and found THE ONE in February, and I left in July. So I had 5 months to get to know them and by the time I got to California we already looooved each other and it made everything so easy.
If you are already in the states, already spent some time with the family and something has been up, something is not okay, like there are a lot of cases when something comes up, a misunderstanding, different opinion on something. That doesn’t mean you have to leave them yet. Most important thing is communication. Go talk to them about that problem, try to find a solution and a middle ground, and if by time it doesn’t change you can go talk to your LCC.
LCC stands for Local Childcare Consultant or the Local Contact for both the family and the aupairs.
I asked my lovely LCC how would she describe the process of going to rematch.
I think it might be easier to explain it here when a family and an au pair go into rematch there is a support meeting and then they are to remain together for two weeks and then another meeting to decide if they will continue in to rematch. Sometimes for safety reasons or when I’m working with right now because of Covid, a rematch can happen right away, but it is not recommended. Once a AP/ family is in rematch, they will be contacted from the office and their profile will be back online where they can search for another family. They do have two weeks to complete this and in some circumstances there is a little bit more time allowed. Usually the au pair will stay with a family during this transition unless there was a safety issue. It’s not ideal. But it can happen. I really encourage AP’s to consider the family and not the location when it comes to selecting a family. There are AMAZING families all over the country and the exchange experience is just waiting for them!
I think she described it really well and now we can understand that it is not ideal, and as she said there is 2 weeks to find another family.
There are cases where AuPairs decide to go home or when they didn’t find a new family.
I hope I gave answers to all your questions, if not, leave a comment below, don’t forget to subscribe to my channels!