May an au pair give medication? Tasks and boundaries in everyday life
Families with a child with a disability often ask us one important question:
May our au pair give our child medication or take on nursing tasks?
We understand this question very well. When medication, medical measures or care are part of a child's daily life, they can eventually start to feel, for the family, like a perfectly normal part of everyday routine.
For the au pair, however, clear boundaries still apply.
An au pair is not a carer
An au pair's task fundamentally consists of looking after the children and helping with light household activities.
This includes, for example:
- playing with the children
- supervising the children
- accompanying them to nursery, school or leisure activities
- going for walks or to the playground
- preparing simple meals for the children
- helping with homework
- taking on light household tasks connected with everyday family life
An au pair, by contrast, is not a qualified carer (nursing professional) and not medical personnel.
Nursing and caring for family members in need of care is not part of an au pair's tasks.
Where does the boundary lie with a child with a disability?
For families with a child with a disability, this distinction is especially important.
Of course, an au pair may also accompany a child with a disability in everyday life. That is exactly what many of our families at Besondere Sterne experience every day.
The au pair can play with the child, go for walks, accompany them to leisure activities, do crafts together, read aloud, or simply spend time with them.
Disability does not automatically mean nursing care.
What matters far more is the specific task the au pair is meant to take on.
As soon as it involves nursing or medical activities, the boundary of the au pair relationship has been reached.
May an au pair administer medication?
Administering medication should not be planned as a regular task for the au pair.
This applies in particular to activities that require medical knowledge, precise dosing, special monitoring, or a response to possible side effects.
Even if giving medication has been a self-evident part of everyday life for parents for years, this does not turn it into a normal au pair task.
The same applies, for example, to medical measures, wound care, injections, or other activities that fall under nursing or treatment care.
“But surely we can show the au pair how to do it”
We understand this thought too.
Parents of a child with a disability have often learned, over years, how to safely carry out certain procedures. Some steps take only a few minutes and appear completely self-evident within the family.
Even so, a medical or nursing activity does not become a permissible au pair task simply because the host family explains it or demonstrates it.
Even prior medical training the au pair may have received in their home country does not fundamentally change their role within the German au pair relationship.
An au pair comes into the family as an au pair – not as a nurse, carer, or medical assistant.
Care and participation instead of nursing
For us at Besondere Sterne, this is precisely where an important distinction lies.
An au pair can give a child with a disability an incredible amount without taking over their nursing care.
The au pair can enable participation.
Going to the playground together. Taking a walk. Having an ice cream. Doing crafts. Playing. Accompanying an outing. Spending time together. Relieving siblings by doing something with them. Or simply giving a child another young person by their side, with whom a very own relationship can develop.
That is au pair care.
Medical treatment and nursing care are something else.
What about a medical emergency?
A genuine emergency situation is something different again.
If a child has, for example, epilepsy, a severe allergy, or another condition in which acute situations can arise, the au pair must of course know how to get help in an emergency and what the agreed emergency procedure looks like.
Host families should therefore discuss such situations thoroughly right from the start and – if one exists for the child – keep a medically agreed emergency plan readily accessible.
Such an emergency plan, however, does not replace a medical professional and does not turn medical activities into regular tasks for the au pair.
Responsibility begins with how tasks are assigned
Host families should not put their au pair in a situation where they are expected to take on activities that lie outside their role.
This is not only a matter of rules, but also of safety.
A young person who may have been living in Germany for only a few weeks, is still learning the language, and is only just getting to know the child, should not have to bear responsibility for medical or nursing measures.
This is why, even before matching, it should be discussed openly what support the child actually needs and which of these tasks an au pair can take on.
If a child requires medical or nursing care at certain times without fail, this must be ensured independently of the au pair.
An au pair for a child with a disability – yes. A carer – no.
A child with a disability and an au pair can be a wonderful match.
Many families particularly want a young person who can give their child more companionship, shared time and participation, while also being there for the siblings.
In doing so, however, the au pair's role must always remain clear:
The au pair accompanies. The au pair cares for and supports. The au pair helps in everyday life. But the au pair is not a carer and not a substitute for qualified medical staff.
This clear boundary protects the child, the au pair, and ultimately the host family too.
