Care for children with disabilities: when HPT and other services are not enough
School finishes at 1pm.
The Heilpädagogische Tagesstätte (HPT — a specialist day centre for children with additional support needs) has no free place.
The family relief service can only offer a handful of hours.
The grandparents live too far away.
And your own child, because of their disability, can't simply stay home alone.
For many parents of a child with a disability, the question isn't whether they need care.
The much harder question is:
Where do I find reliable care for my child with a disability that genuinely fits our family's everyday life?
Because even when support services already exist, care gaps often remain.
This is exactly where it can make sense to combine different care options – and to consider a form of support that many families don't initially have on their radar at all:
an au pair for a child with a disability.
What care options exist for children with disabilities?
Depending on the child's age, support needs and where you live, different services are available.
These can include, for example:
- Heilpädagogische Tagesstätte (HPT — specialist day centre)
- after-school club or afternoon care
- inclusive childcare services
- family relief or family support service (FED/FUD)
- leisure assistance
- holiday care
- short-term respite care
- support from grandparents or other relatives
- further individual assistance and support services
Which services are actually available, and what conditions apply, varies enormously from region to region.
And that is precisely where the first problem often lies for many families.
What can you do when the HPT has no free place?
A Heilpädagogische Tagesstätte can be invaluable support for a child with a disability and their family.
But what happens when there's no place available?
Perhaps the child is on a waiting list.
Perhaps there's no suitable facility nearby at all.
Perhaps the family is only offered a place on certain weekdays.
Or the care times simply don't match the parents' working hours.
In that case, the family's actual problem isn't solved.
The child still needs care.
When care only works on three days
This, too, is a typical situation.
On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday the child is cared for after school.
But what happens on Wednesday and Friday?
Individual care gaps like these for a child with a disability can be enormously difficult for working parents.
After all, it's hard to organise a job around the fact that on two afternoons every week there's suddenly no care in place.
An additional carer within your own household can open up new possibilities here.
An au pair can complement existing care
An au pair for a child with a disability doesn't need to replace existing services at all.
Quite the opposite.
Perhaps the HPT works brilliantly.
Then, of course, it simply continues.
The au pair instead takes on the times around it.
For example, in the morning before school.
On an HPT-free afternoon.
After care finishes.
During leisure activities.
Or in the evening.
This way, an individual care network is built from several different services.
When an older child still can't be left alone
Age also plays a particular role when looking for childcare for a child with a disability.
A twelve-year-old without a disability may already be able to spend some time at home alone.
Your own twelve-year-old may still need an adult with them.
Perhaps they can't yet judge risks well enough.
Perhaps they need support with communication.
Perhaps they can't eat or occupy themselves independently.
Or they simply need the reassurance that someone is there.
In that case, the need for care doesn't automatically end with primary-school age.
And that can present families with major organisational challenges.
Care at home after school
An au pair lives in the household as a temporary family member.
After a suitable settling-in period, they can, for example, meet or collect the child from school or the HPT and accompany part of the afternoon.
Sharing a snack together.
Playing.
Doing crafts.
Reading aloud.
Going into the garden.
Going to the playground.
Following a familiar afternoon routine.
Or setting off for a leisure activity.
For the child, this care takes place in their familiar surroundings, with an increasingly familiar person.
It's often the edges of the day that cause the problem
Perhaps there's actually enough care available – just not at the right times.
The HPT finishes at 4pm.
Mum works until 5pm.
The school bus doesn't come in the morning until after Dad would really need to have left for work.
The holiday programme runs until 2pm.
The siblings need collecting from somewhere else at the same time.
Gaps like these at the edges of the childcare day can dictate an entire family's daily life.
Within their permitted working hours, an au pair can be flexibly scheduled exactly where the family genuinely needs support.
30 hours a week can be used with real purpose
An au pair supports their host family for up to 30 hours a week and a maximum of six hours a day, babysitting included.
This time doesn't have to be spread evenly across every day.
For a child with a disability in particular, an individually planned weekly schedule can make good sense.
Perhaps the au pair is mainly needed in the afternoons on three days.
In the mornings on another day.
And once takes on babysitting in the evening.
Of course, the legal framework, as well as the au pair's free time and language course, must be taken into account.
But within that framework, support can be shaped around the family's actual everyday life.
Care can also mean accompanying someone
A child with a disability may not need care at home for the whole afternoon at all.
What they need instead is someone to accompany them.
To children's gymnastics.
To music school.
To football.
To riding therapy.
To the playground.
To meet a friend.
Or to another leisure activity.
An au pair can support here as a familiar companion, essentially a form of leisure assistance.
And that can make a crucial difference.
Because suddenly the child isn't just getting care.
They're getting more opportunities to take part in ordinary childhood and leisure life.
When a holiday scheme is only possible with a companion
The same can apply during the school holidays.
Perhaps there's a lovely holiday camp nearby.
But the scheme isn't set up to care for a child with higher support needs on its own.
After discussing this with the organiser in advance, it may be necessary or possible to bring your own companion.
Here too, depending on the specific situation, an au pair can support as that companion.
This can make a scheme that initially seemed unsuitable accessible to the child after all.
And what happens with siblings?
Care for a child with a disability should also never be considered in isolation.
Because while Mum drives one child to therapy, the sibling may end up waiting along with them.
While Dad looks after the child, the brother's football training gets missed.
While one parent accompanies an appointment, the other has to take on every remaining task.
With an extra person, the family can divide things up.
Perhaps the au pair looks after the child with a disability.
Perhaps they take on the siblings instead.
Either can bring real relief.
An au pair does not replace necessary specialist care
That said, the boundaries need to stay clear.
An au pair is not a care worker.
Not a therapist.
Not a special needs educator.
And they do not replace medically or professionally necessary care.
A needed school companion or other professional service shouldn't simply be replaced by an au pair either.
But not every hour of family life requires a specialist.
Sometimes what a child needs above all is:
a familiar person to be there, play, accompany and support them.
And that is exactly where an au pair can represent an additional care option.
An au pair needs time to get to know the child
Especially for a child with a disability or particular support needs, care shouldn't be handed over completely straight after the au pair arrives.
The au pair needs to get to know the child.
The family shows them the routines.
You do things together.
The au pair observes.
Then they take on individual tasks.
And step by step, more responsibility can be handed over.
For this settling-in and induction period, the family should allow enough time – depending on the child and the au pair.
The goal isn't to hand over care as quickly as possible.
The goal is for a reliable, trusting relationship to develop.
Care doesn't have to come from a single solution
Perhaps this is the most important thought of all.
When parents look for care options for a child with a disability, they understandably often hope for that one care place that finally solves everything.
But family life doesn't always work that way.
Perhaps the individual solution looks like this:
HPT on three afternoons.
Au pair on two afternoons.
A school companion during school hours.
Grandparents on one weekend.
The family relief service for individual times.
A holiday scheme with a companion.
And parents, of course, still right at the centre of it all.
From many individual building blocks, a support network takes shape that fits your own family.
When conventional care isn't enough, it's fine to think differently
An au pair for a child with a disability isn't the right solution for every family.
But it's an option that is often not even considered when searching for care.
And yet the combination of childcare at home, afternoon companionship, leisure assistance, journeys to therapy, sibling care and support at the edges of the day can be well worth exploring.
So perhaps your family doesn't need one more perfect care place.
Perhaps it needs several different building blocks.
And perhaps an au pair could be one of them – an additional, familiar person who provides support exactly where HPT, school and other services end, and where ordinary family life carries on.
