Benefits of having an au pair

Let’s face it, we live an incredibly fast-paced and demanding reality, which admittedly, can be difficult to keep up with at times. Between juggling work responsibilities, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, running everyday errands and preserving a social life, it seems almost impossible to run a household. Throw a couple kids into that mix and – well, your entire world is turned upside down. This is right about when one could use an extra hand or two. An au pair is the perfect way to maintain a healthy, balanced lifestyle for you and your family. In this blog, we discuss the benefits of having an au pair, and a few reasons why you should consider one for your family.

Professional Child Care

To begin, an au pair is an individual who has a love for working with children, and assisting in their physical, emotional and intellectual development. Along these lines, au pairs assist families with daily tasks like collecting kids from school and driving them to extra mural activities and appointments. In addition, au pairs help with homework while also entertaining and stimulating the kids. Depending on your family’s schedule, an au pair may even assist with preparing meals, running errands such as grocery shopping and even babysitting in the evenings. For school age children, au pairs often become role models and mentors that they can grow strong bonds with.

Hiring an au pair is by no means minimising your responsibility as a parent or guardian. It is simply providing your family with an extra hand when you need it most. Childhood professionals like au pairs play an essential role in nurturing important growth and development in children, and can provide your children with safety, care and support when you are unable to do so.

Personalised Support

Further benefits of having an au pair is that they provide your family with a much more personalised service than any day-care or aftercare facility. As this engagement is normally conducted over an extended amount of time, you have the opportunity to form a healthy and transparent relationship with the au pair, and discuss relevant requirements and tasks in a professional and mature manner. In this way, your au pair can ensure relevant family routines, practises and responsibilities are consistently followed, even when you are not around.

Most importantly however, is the one-on-one care and support your child/ren can receive from hiring an au pair. Your child is able to form a strong bond with your au pair, learning to trust, confide in and depend on your au pair in times of need. In addition, an au pair is able to bring an additional avenue of creativity to your child’s learning and development.

Experienced and Screened Care

Here at SA Cares, we ensure each and every au pair we assign to our families meet our minimum requirements. Along these lines, our au pairs all have adequate experience in childcare and support. More specifically, each au pair is required to have previous formal child care experience, a valid driver’s licence, a reliable car and a matric certificate. IN addition to this, we insist that each au pair expresses a love and passion for working with children. This allows you to place full confidence in your au pair when you are not available.

In addition, SA Cares is meticulous about our background checks, criminal clearances and careful psychometric analysis. We want you to have a full understanding of who you are bringing into your home, and are thus committed to ensuring every registered au pair has undergone our thorough screening and assessment. Through this process, we are also able to accurately match your family with a particular au pair, based on your families’ requirements.

In conclusion, the benefit of having an au pair is The convenience and flexibility of an extra set of hands can go a long way in simplifying your life. Another adult around the house can calm a hectic morning routine, and provide a sense of stability and comfort for your children throughout the day – even when you are not available.