How to Work from Home When you Have Young Children
Working from home when you have young children can be very challenging. Even when you’ve managed to get some time to yourself, you can find that you’re always keeping half an eye on your toddler, making it difficult to concentrate on work. Taking advantage of nap times to do some work can also be a problem if you have children of different ages. As a result, it’s worth considering the benefits of hiring an au pair, who can be found by working with a reputable agency such as BusyBee Au Pairs.
What Does an Au Pair Do?
An au pair is not a maid or someone that can act as a full time child carer. Instead, they tend to be young people aged between 18-26 from outside the UK, who live with families for about 12 to 24 months; during this time, they learn English or take a course, while providing an extra pair of hands around the house. Au pairs are primarily there to give you some help with looking after children, and can also carry out light housework.
Depending on what your needs are, you can reasonably expect an au pair to help with meal preparation, tidying up after children, and dropping and picking them up from school and activities. What you expect from an au pair should be clearly laid out when they start their time with you, and you should make sure that you don’t load them up with too many duties, as well as sole responsibility for children at different times of the day.
Au pairs can’t be responsible for children under the age of two for an extended period of time, for example, and aren’t expected to be trained in looking after children. Their responsibilities and experience should be worked out and checked in advance through an agency. You should mainly, then, see an au pair as helping you out, rather than acting as a full time carer that you can trust with all jobs around the house.
It’s also important to discuss a daily routine with an au pair so that your working day and down-time aren’t negatively affected; this means arranging for regular meal-times, as well as agreements on locking up if they’re going out for the night. Other rules might cover appropriate usage of the internet and telephone lines, as well as whether other people can be brought into the house when you’re not around.
Some basic rules that you need to remember when taking in an au pair involve making sure that they have enough pocket money on top of their bed and board, which can help them to be more independent. For about 25 hours of work a week, you should expect to pay out about £70, with more given for working in London. One full day off should also be provided every week, while time can be taken to work out registration with local doctor’s and dentist’s offices once an au pair has settled.
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Category: Business, Home Business
