This morning we received a great question on our Family Forum (at www.aupairclearinghouse.com) about counselors and LCCs working full-time outside the au pair agency they contract with.
The question is "Can Counselors Work Full-time while Working for their Au Pair Agency?"
We have not dealt with this issue before, and we just added the question and our answer to our list of FAQs at our website, www.aupairclearinghouse.com.
Au pair agencies that are designated by the Dept. of State are required to monitor their counselors' working hours outside of their au pair/host family duties. The Dept. of State clearly states that no counselor can work full-time if their cluster numbers are over 15 host families.
The Dept. of State regulation reads:
"(8) (au pair agencies must) Require that local organizational representatives not devoting their fulltime and attention to their program obligations are responsible for no more than fifteen au pairs and host families;"
Why does the Dept. of State mandate that au pair agencies require the limit of hours a counselor works outside of her contract hours with the agency? To ensure the safety of host families, children and the au pairs they are responsible for!
If the counselor is not available because she is working outside of the home (or in it) full-time, she can not properly service her customers, who include not just families, but the young au pairs in her charge.
When the Louise Woodward hit the media, public outcry against the au pair agencies demanded the USA government to either abolish the cultural exchange progam altogether or drastically change it to protect children. As a result, the Dept. of State issued many changes and increased their supervision of all au pair agencies in the country.
The limitation of work hours counselors can work is an important one - if a counselor is working 40 hours or more a week at another job, it is impossible to adequately service host families and the au pairs they are in charge of! Not only is the question of time an important factor, it is the quality of work the counselor gives.
A counselor would have to be super-human to come home from an 8 hour day and then be mentally and physically alert and prepared to deal with mutiple phone calls and emergencies that host families and au pairs may have. Also, what do these counselors do if their families or au pairs have an emergency during the working day? Can they leave their jobs? Probably not! So, the emergency has to wait for the counselor to end her job at 5 (or later) and get on to the au pair situation.
Does this delay in service help to explain the many complaints that host families register against au pair agencies online? Most of the complaints do have a common theme: the time and quality of a counselor's response to an emergency or urgent situation a host family or au pair is experiencing.
For example, here is an actual complaint registered by a host family at insiderpages.com:
"The two au pairs that were sent to help us with our children were not appropriate in any manner and we did not let either one of them supervise our two children alone. One was aggressive toward our 3 and 5 year olds and had a habit of yelling, grabbing and shaking our kids if they spilled their milk or made any typical kid mistakes. Our next replacement au pair partied all night each night and slept on the couch when she was supposed to be watching our kids. She also was too fond of getting drunk during the day.
We tried endlessly to communicate with our au pairs, LCCs and the main office of Cultural Care au pair, but no one cared. They did not return numerous calls and emails. We had 3 LCCs during our 5 month relationship with Cultural Care."
We are not using this example to target Cultural Care, one of the leading au pair agencies in the country and our number one pick for 2009, but the comment is used to illustrate that the LCCs did not return numerous calls and emails. If the LCC is working full-time (she may be or not, we do not know), it would be difficult to get back to this host family in a timely manner.
There are other complaints out there on the web, about other agencies, and one theme that keeps emerging is the timely manner in which LCCs or counselors respond to their au pairs and host families.
Does this theme represent the reality that counselors/LCCs are working more hours than they should? In these economic times, these staff may have to resort to other jobs, to keep their families fed and housed.
Yet, at the same time, host families pay good money and expect good, if not great customer service.
If their counselors are not in the field during the day, taking phone calls, customer service is going to take a back seat. More importantly, are these counselors up to the psychological demands of the job? Many times, the urgent phone calls have to do with personality conflicts, au pairs gone AWOL, child safety issues, etc. If you are not fresh and rested, with time to deal with these issues, how can one perform to their best ability?
The answer is, not very well, or not at all in some cases, as supported by the complaints registered here and online at other websites.
We would love to have counselors chime in here and let our readers know what kinds of restrictions they are under regarding hours they work for au pair agencies and other jobs.
We would welcome au pair agencies to respond and to post their comments regarding the kind of monitoring they have in place to ensure they are meeting the 15 host family limit set by the Dept. of State - and how do they check on their counselors' working hours during the day.
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