American families spend several thousand dollars a year on child care. What do you do if you can’t afford it? What if you want to get out of debt or save some money? What if you are unemployed and have no cash inflow in your household? You still need to be able to search for a job, interview and spend some time away from your children. Hiring an au pair cost about $ 320 a week. Hiring a nanny costs usually over $500 a week. Many of us don’t even bring home that amount after taxes. And we still need to pay for our mortgage, car loan, groceries and other living expenses. Host & Care allows you to find a volunteer care provider in exchange for hosting a student in your home. You provide free room and board while volunteer nanny provides part-time childcare in exchange. This type of barter helps you with your child care needs and it offers a student an opportunity to live for free in their desired destination. This arrangement saves you thousands of dollars in childcare bills while a student saves huge amount of money in rent expense. You both have save time and money this way. As job opportunities shrink in all over the world, the free room & board option for part time work looks increasingly appealing. A desire for adventure is also a lure for young Europeans. Western Europeans love to travel and spend a summer abroad. Many U.S. households have reined in their spending to cope with the economic downturn getting a volunteer is typically is definitely less expensive than hiring a babysitter locally or enrolling children in day care. Last week, the U.K. reported that its economy shrank at its fastest pace in almost three decades in the first quarter of 2009. While this solution might be financially sound during the recession it is also a wonderful cultural exchange for every economy.

A Volunteer Au Pair is typically a young woman between the late teens to mid-thirties who is looking to spend a summer or a gap year abroad and provide part time child care in exchange for free room and board. They trade room and board abroad for their services in child care. An Au Pair will volunteer with the hopes of furthering their education outside of their country of origin, or having the luxury of traveling where they may not typically have been able to afford to do so, giving them the experience of being with a host family in a foreign country. Au Pairs usually have some previous childcare education and experience. However, sometimes this is not the case. The best benefit to hiring an Au Pair is receiving free, part-time child care. Getting a background check and reference check performed by a professional and reputable company is always a good idea. You can also install surveillance to assure that your children are in safe hands. In addition, you can chat with each other on chat, exchange e-mail, watch videos and pictures and get to know each other in the safety and comfort of our website. This is a much more intimate process versus going into the great unknown with an agency. When searching for an Au Pair you will want to host someone you feel comfortable leaving the well being of your child with. You need to host someone you feel could be an asset to your family and fit in with the setting and environment which you have created. Make sure the candidates you review have experience with children in the age range of your own children, this ensure if any problems or concerns should arise with your child, the Au Pair will be able to handle the situation and act accordingly. If you need part time child care a free and volunteer Au Pair might be a cost effective answer to your child care needs. If you need full time care for your child or for your children and don’t want to spend any cash you can host 2 volunteers to take turns caring for your kids. It will be more fun for a couple of friends looking to travel abroad for the summer or for the year and you will have all your childcare needs met. Alternatively, you can agree on hourly rate for any additional hours beyond part time employment.

Families face few problems when hiring an Au Pair. Agencies charge families a considerable amount of money for placing an Au Pair in the family home and her salary is a considerable weekly expense. Additionally, you don’t really know whom you are getting to live with you in your very own house until the last moment. Au pairs face few problems as well. They move to a new location eager to see the country, experience the culture, do sightseeing, take some classes, make friends and have an amazing experience to remember for a lifetime. Unfortunately, when they work 45 hour week they don’t have time or energy left to do any of the exciting things they set out to do. Host & Care offers a solution to all of the above problems. Using Host & Care free social network volunteer au pairs offer to provide part time childcare in exchange for free room and board. This form of exchange gives volunteer au pair free time to study, make friends, socialize, do sightseeing and go out while at the same time she has free room and board. Family gets free part-time childcare which saves thousands of dollars. In case of school age children chances are you don’t need someone to be working 45 hours weeks for you. Your child comes home from school at 3 pm in the afternoon and you are back from work around 6 pm. That is 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. If you can spare a bedroom, you can now afford an Au Pair. Europeans do it all the time. Your volunteer au pair will get to enjoy life in another country, in a way that can really help them to authentically live a country's "life style." The benefits of having a free au pair are many. Since an au pair resides in the home, the whole family will get to know her/him very intimately. An au pair will become part of the family and can provide consistent support to the children. For young children especially it is important that they are able to form a bond with their care provider, and an au pair is able to facilitate this in a way that builds a long lasting relationship. Your Au Pair can be available as needed and if you need additional hours as the occasion arises you can agree on her hourly wage. The au pair's primary responsibility is to care for the children, and she/he will have their own experiences and time off around the family's schedule. An au pair can be available to take kids to music lessons or soccer practice and can watch them in the evening if it's finally time for a special date! An Au Pair cares for the children in their own home. While day care and after school programs are wonderful and needed services, time and again studies show that children, especially young children, enjoy the time they are able to be in the comfortable, relaxing, and familiar environment of their own home. Because an au pair lives in the family home, this need can be supported in a very unique way. Typically au pairs are also able to provide assistance with household chores such as laundry, grocery shopping and food preparation. This is a huge benefit for families because it gives parents the ability to spend more quality time with their children rather than constantly worrying about keeping up with the house. Bringing an au pair into the family creates a cultural exchange for both parties. The au pair is able to live and breathe the experience of living in a new country and the new culture that comes along with it. But, the au pair also brings her/his culture with them; traditional songs, or stories, a new language, and/or special foods, all of which introduce the whole family to new things that they otherwise would not likely have experienced. A unique opportunity presents itself for your children to learn a foreign language from your volunteer. You can make it unstructured and built into daily lives or you can agree on predefined number of hours per week. Hosting an au pair can be a unique and exciting way to meet childcare needs for a family. The benefits of having a volunteer au pair can offer both children and their parents are great, and at the same time, a young person from another country is given a fabulous opportunity to explore the world! Stop saving pennies on clipping coupons and start saving thousands of dollars on childcare.