What is an au pair allowed to do? Tasks and boundaries in family life
What is an au pair actually allowed to do? Can they take the children to school, prepare meals, fold children's laundry, or accompany a child with a disability to therapy? And where is the line between an au pair, a carer, a school support worker (Schulbegleitung), a therapist and a cleaner?
It's especially families with a child with a disability who ask us these questions often.
A simple distinction helps here:
An au pair supports the family's ordinary everyday life. They do not take on medical, nursing or therapeutic specialist tasks.
What belongs to an au pair's tasks?
At the heart of an au pair's stay are looking after the children and light tasks within the shared household.
Depending on the children's ages and the family's daily life, an au pair can, for example:
- play, do crafts and read aloud with the children
- go for walks or to the playground with them
- supervise the children
- help with getting dressed and everyday routines
- accompany tooth-brushing
- prepare simple meals for the children
- eat together with the children
- tidy children's rooms together with them
- fold and put away children's laundry
- help with light tasks in the shared family household
- take children to and collect them from nursery or school
- accompany them to play groups, friends or leisure activities
- take children to sports clubs or other appointments
- structure the afternoon together with the children
- babysit in the evening
Which of these tasks actually belong to daily life is agreed individually with the host family.
An au pair can bring structure to family life
For many families, the biggest relief isn't a single task but the additional reliable person in everyday life.
After school there's something to eat first. Then a break. After that homework is done, and later they head outside.
Or in the morning: get up, get dressed, have breakfast, pack the lunchbox and walk to school together.
An au pair can wonderfully support such consistent routines and sequences.
Children who benefit from predictable structures in particular can, over time, develop a great deal of security from them.
What can an au pair take on for a child with a disability?
A child with a disability, too, first of all needs many of the same things as any other child:
Time. Attention. Play. Movement. Company. Reliable routines. Shared experiences.
An au pair can therefore, for example, go for a walk with the child, play, do crafts, read aloud, go on an outing, or accompany them to leisure activities.
Simply being present can already be a valuable kind of support.
If a child cannot be left alone, for example, the au pair can spend time with them while a parent attends an appointment or deliberately gives attention to a sibling.
Supporting communication in daily life
Some children with disabilities communicate differently.
A child might use a talker (speech-generating device), picture cards, supportive signs, or particular simplified phrasing.
This, too, may be part of everyday life together with the au pair.
The family can, for example, show the au pair how to hand over the talker, join in with or use familiar signs, repeat communication prompts, or give the child enough time to respond.
This does not turn the au pair's role into a speech-therapy task.
They simply use the forms of communication the child already uses in their everyday life.
Is an au pair allowed to accompany a child to therapy?
In principle, accompanying a child on a journey can be part of childcare.
An au pair can, for example, take a child to an agreed appointment or collect them, and – if this has been clarified with the parents and the facility accordingly – be present.
The crucial thing, however, is the boundary:
Accompanying someone to therapy is not the same as providing therapy.
An au pair does not carry out speech-and-language therapy, occupational therapy or physiotherapy treatments, and should not independently direct or bear professional responsibility for therapeutic exercises.
Of course, playful exercises or forms of communication that are already part of family life anyway, and that have been shown by parents or professionals, can be repeated in daily life. But that does not make the au pair a therapist.
Looking after siblings can also be an enormous relief
In families with a child with a disability, it's understandable that a great deal of attention is directed towards that child.
The siblings must not be forgotten, though.
An au pair can just as well take a sibling to the playground, drive them to sport, do homework together, or spend a lovely afternoon with them.
And sometimes that is exactly the biggest relief:
The au pair looks after the siblings so that Mum or Dad can deliberately have time for the child with a disability.
That, too, is part of an inclusive family life.
Edge-of-day times: when someone simply needs to be there
Certain times of day can be particularly difficult to organise for families.
Early morning before school or nursery. The afternoon after school finishes. Holiday periods. Or an hour between two appointments.
An au pair can cover such edge-of-day times, within their permitted working hours, and be there for the children.
Especially when a child cannot be left alone, this additional reliable person in the house can make a huge difference for a family.
What is an au pair allowed to do in the household?
Light household tasks are part of the au pair arrangement.
These can, for example, be activities around the children, but also light tasks within the shared household.
An au pair can, for example, load or unload the dishwasher, help tidy up after meals, prepare simple meals, or help with children's laundry.
However, they are not a cleaner or domestic help.
Regular deep cleaning of a house or flat, and heavy housework, are not part of their tasks.
How many hours is an au pair allowed to work?
In Germany, an au pair's help may in principle amount to no more than six hours a day and 30 hours a week.
Important here: babysitting counts towards this.
So if the au pair looks after the children for three hours one evening, for example, those hours count as working time and are not added on top of the 30 weekly hours.
Accompanying time and other agreed au pair tasks must be taken into account in the same way.
What is an au pair not allowed to take on?
An au pair is not a medical or nursing professional.
This is precisely why medical and nursing specialist tasks in particular do not belong in their regular area of responsibility.
An au pair should not, for example, be used
- to hand out or routinely administer medication
- to take on emergency medication as a routinely planned medical responsibility
- to carry out tube feeding as a nursing measure
- for suctioning
- to take on catheter care
- to change dressings
- to independently direct therapeutic exercises
- to make medical decisions for the child
- to replace professional nursing care.
The fact that a family has carried out certain medical or nursing procedures daily for years, and that these have become second nature to the parents, does not turn them into an au pair task.
An au pair does not replace school support (Schulbegleitung)
A school support worker (Schulbegleitung) also has a different task from an au pair.
An au pair can take a child to school in the morning and collect them again after lessons end.
However, they do not take on the professional accompaniment of a child during lessons.
If a child needs support in school life because of their disability, this is the task of the support systems designated for that purpose, not of the au pair.
An au pair does not replace a carer or a care service
The same applies to nursing and medical care.
If a child absolutely needs care or medical measures at particular times, this provision must be secured independently of the au pair.
The au pair can nonetheless play an incredibly valuable role in this child's life.
Just a different one.
Not every form of support for a child with a disability is care
This point matters a great deal to us at Besondere Sterne.
Between professional care and therapy on one side, and doing nothing on the other, lies a huge area:
ordinary, everyday family life.
Eating together. Playing. Folding children's laundry. Tidying up. Going for walks. Accompanying a sibling. Driving to the playground. Looking at a book together. Handing over a talker. Simply being there in the afternoon.
A disability-related need for support does not automatically turn every everyday situation into a nursing activity.
That is precisely why an au pair can also be valuable support for a family with a child with a disability.
An au pair takes on everyday life – not specialist provision
Perhaps the distinction can be summed up most simply in one sentence:
An au pair accompanies family life. They do not replace a specialist professional.
They look after the children, play, accompany, listen, structure, help, and over the course of the year become a trusted, familiar person in the child's life.
But they are not a carer, a school support worker, a therapist, or domestic help.
Precisely when these boundaries are clear from the outset, what an au pair year is meant to be can actually happen:
A young person becomes part of the family for a while, supports the parents in daily life, and gives the children something especially valuable in often busy family life:
Time, attention and shared experiences.
