June 29, 2026
Step 1
Confirming legal work authorization before anything else
Here’s what typically happens: a family finds a candidate they love, the interviews go well, the kids click, everyone is excited — and then two weeks before the start date, they realize the Au Pair doesn’t actually have the right to work in Canada yet. Or worse, they assume that because someone has a valid tourist visa, they can legally start caring for their children. THEY CAN’T
Hiring an Au Pair on a tourist visa is illegal. The Canadian immigration law is clear: A visitor visa does not permit employment in Canada. Families should never allow an Au Pair to begin working until they have received the appropriate authorization to work.
Working authorization is the single most important thing to confirm before you make any other commitment. In Canada, there’s no single “Au Pair visa.” Instead, Au Pairs arrive through several different pathways — and which one applies depends entirely on where your candidate is from.
The most common pathway: The International Mobility Program covers young workers from countries that have youth mobility agreements with Canada. No Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) is required, which makes this faster and simpler for most families. Countries like Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, and several others qualify.
Step 2
Getting specific about expectations — in writing — before the Au Pair arrives
The most common reason a placement breaks down is not a bad candidate. It’s a mismatch in expectations that nobody addressed while there was still time to address it. Families assume things are understood. Au Pairs assume other things. Neither party is wrong — they’re just working from different assumptions, and those differences compound quickly when you’re living under the same roof.
Many families seem to forget that Au Pairs are generally young individuals most with limited experience.
The most successful placements happen when families view their Au Pair as a young person who will benefit from guidance, patience, and clear communication during the first few weeks.
A written hosting agreement is not a legal contract in the formal employment sense — it’s a shared understanding. It covers the things that feel obvious to you but might not be obvious to someone who grew up in a different country with different household norms.
Step 3
Planning the first two weeks as deliberately as you planned the hire
Families put a lot of energy into finding the right person. Then the Au Pair arrives, everyone is busy, and the “settling in” period gets treated as something that will just happen on its own. For some placements it does. For many, it doesn’t — and the first two weeks quietly set the tone for everything that follows.
Moving to a new country is significant, even for someone who was excited to do it. Your Au Pair is navigating a new home, new children, new routines, potentially a new climate, and a new culture — often all at once. How you handle those first weeks directly affects how quickly they find their footing and how well they’re able to care for your children.
It is ultra important to invest time in training your Au Pair in those first few weeks to set good standards and establish a routine.
The bottom line
None of these steps are complicated. But they’re easy to skip when you’re busy, excited, or simply nobody told you they mattered. The families who get Au Pair placements right — really right, the ones who call us years later to say the experience changed their family — are the ones who treat the process with the same care they bring to every other important decision.
If you’d like to talk through your situation before you start, our placement coordinators are easy to reach. No pressure, no sales pitch — just a straight conversation about whether an Au Pair is the right fit for your family and what the process looks like.
