Commenting on Au Pair ClearingHouse

Hello readers!

I wanted to take a few moments here to address some of the multiple emails and comments we continue to receive, almost daily, on Cultural Care.

Since we dropped this agency from the Top Three Agencies for 2009, based on our new report (by Bella Gioia), it seems an editorial dam has been broken and readers now feel free to post pages of negative commentary on this au pair agency.

Creating our Top Agency List each year is only one of the many services we provide here at AuPairClearingHouse.

Our goal is to publish engaging human interest stories, helpful articles and useful information overall to assist the host parent in their search for the best childcare they can find!

At times, we find that we are sometimes distracted from this work when we need to address multiple complaints directed at us about other readers' complaints! We do feel responsible for addressing each and everyone of you - but today's blog, for better or worse, is our attempt to respond to multiple readers who share the following issues with our website:

Our Family Forum at our website, www.aupairclearinghouse.com was created to allow host families to share advice, tips and experiences with the cultural exchange program. This includes sharing negative and postive experiences with different au pair agencies. We always assume that the reader has a positive intent in writing their comment, in helping other host families, and in helping the subject au pair agency mentioned provide a better product or service.


Some readers are critical that I allow such a "forum or platform" where readers are allowed to post negative comments about Cultural Care. The tide has certainly turned when Cultural Care was Number One on our list, where I was also criticized for supporting them! Readers even suggested that my website was owned and operated by Cultural Care and I was actually a Cultural Care employee.

We do understand emotions can run high around certain topics. However, our company does assume that a complaint or comment is a description of a situation experienced by an individual consumer and is only a personal opinion by that consumer, and only an individual perception of that consumer.

This personal perception of a situation and based on their own experience can be powerful, emotionally charged, helpful, useful, or meaningless, depending upon the context and content of what is written and how that information is interpreted by whomever reads it.

By posting these comments, we do not mean to imply we are in agreement with any comment. Readers' personal opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect our professional opinion on any one topic or issue.

Readers, please be reminded that our IT staff are only the moderators of the comments we receive. No conclusions are drawn by our staff as to content validity. We do not validate information posted online unless we say we did.

Comments describe a personal, firsthand experience. If a reader experienced something personally, that person owns that information about their perception of, and opinion about, that personal experience, and is free to discuss their opinion about that experience, as a host parent, counselor, LCC, au pair, and professional entity.

We do not guarantee the accuracy of any reader comments or the information they provide - it stands on its own as a personal description of what they experienced.

We do not endorse any one comment or au pair agency. We have made decisions not to post certain comments based on ones that contain profance language and inappropriate attacks, statements that we feel do not add to the flow and content of our website.

Please feel free to continue to share your experiences on the Family Forum, or here on this Blog, but please note that:

This website does recommend individual au pair agencies - that is the nature of our business! However, any reader comments that are posted by our site does not reflect our professional stance on anyone company. Our own opinions and reviews stand on their own merit and are clearly posted and signed by me or other au pair clearinghouse staff.


Thank you all for your continued support and interest in our website!

Have a terrific day.

Best,

Edina