Au pairs may ease childcare dilemma

The Australian: Au pairs may ease childcare dilemma :

"Au pairs - normally young women from Britain, France, Switzerland and Germany, who agree to help an Australian family with their children in exchange for room, board and about $150 a week - currently enter the country on working visas, which prevent them from working for one family for more than three months."

We do have to look at how we are structuring our society because life has changed. Children do need care. Creating longer au pair positions makes sense in terms of continuity. It could maybe be organised as a reciprocal arrangement with the countries which usually supply us with au pairs. Australians would just as much like to benefit from living and working with a family and learning another country and culture as other nations like to learn ours. The young ones are keen on travel and they do seem to have a nice way and patience with young children. For all that can be said of young ones, they are very sociable and like to be busy. Maybe we need to organise an international certificate and put some checks and balances in so that each country is contributing to levels of assessment with these au pairs. That way the length of stay could be perhaps balanced against the level of experience and by that I mean au pairs should rack up nanny points, first aid etc in their own or neighbouring countries first. I certainly think 3 months is too short a time in that particular position so certification is probably the way to go.