Culture Care Au Pair: Be an Au Pair in the US

We had an Au Pair through Cultural Care for 17 months. The Au Pair consistently complained about the lack of support from the Corporate Headquarters for Cultural care from the beginning of her participation in the program. I had the personal experience myself, when two weeks ago we read an article in the New York times about an upcoming voluntary shut down of the airlines. Emirates had already grounded their fleet, and there were limited flights from the U.S. to Germany, where our Au Pair was from. She contacted CC on Feb 15th to begin the process of her regularly scheduled departure to home (prior to COVID-19 pandemic becoming a real threat). One week after this request, she still hadn’t heard anything back, so she contacted them again and received a notice that she would hear more information in a few weeks time. Then as the world changed, and the Pandemic began taking over the U.S.; she spoke with my family and her parents and agreed because of the Airlines cutting back substantially on flights and even stating they would have a voluntary shut down of all flight operations, that it would be best to get her home to her family. She immediately contacted Cultural Care. After two days and no results from CC, I found the cheapest flight possible and flew her home for $699. I contacted CC for reimbursement since I have already paid for her return flight home in the initial payment/fess upon matching with her 17 months ago and they refused. After multiple conversations with them they do not agree that we deserve to be reimbursed for having made the right safety decision for their employee. This all despite having Field Hospitals in Central Park for the first time since the Civil War in 1865 because the hospitals cannot keep up with the onslaught of this virus.

Please AVOID Cultural Care, if you would like to work with a company that uses commons sense and compassion to make business decisions.

Bad! Bad! Bad! Review from 2 former au pairs.

One of us were an au pair for a year in 2018 and the other one came to America on Jan 13th 2020 and came home march 18th 2020.

Let´s start with the Au pair school. First of all, you get into this au pair school in new york! your very tired and you might be jetlagged, but you have to wake up really early in the morning no matter how late your flight came in. the people you flew to the US with you think you will be able to talk with tomorrow since you are in a new country alone you are nervouse and want to make sure you will at least have some friends. but when you wake up you will find out that cultural care has a lot of ways to ruin that. everytime you get a new "friend" they seperate you from that person. you will every 5 hour stand alone again because you get seperated from the people you dont even know yet. but if you are from south america or south africa or south europe and you have 20 people from your country you are in good hands. but someone like me who is danish i was the only dane and i had noone i could be with, and trust me a group of 6 italians and 17 south africans they dont give a f*** about you. they also claim they put you in rooms with people going to your destination, yes they do but you never see this person cause they seperate you in everything beside your room, i never saw my fellow atlanta people until we were going to the aiport and i felt directly bullied by them cause i had never seen them during the week. the food is horrible and the rooms are the same. there is no lock in the bathroom and you share with 8 other people on both sides of the bathroom, very unpleasent.

you then have a flight to your destination, but because you only pay cultural care a fortune to become an au pair, they of course didnt buy so you can have your luggage with you, you have to do that yourself (100 dollars) :)

also your hostfamily pay around 110,000 dollares for you to get there! money you dont get! cultural care does! thats a lot of money you never see! so fair of course (not)
i was then in rematch which cultural care helped me absolut 0 with! cause they dont want you in rematch they want you home cause you have to pay your own ticket home so they get to keep the money they should have used on your ticket at the end of the year. and cultural care are of course impossible to get in contact with, cause you are only a young girl stuck in a new country so you dont need their help!!!
i tell you! i was in rematch for 1 and a half week! and i had no new matches! the reason for this is that cultural care didnt open my profile even though i told them many times and they said they had! but they didnt cause no families i talk to said i was available on the webside! so thankyou cultural care to use my money and not help me when i needed it! And i know everything happend with Covid-19 virus, but i was i America, homeless and tried to call the company and not a single time they picked up the phone. Not even ones.

really dont use this company they use you for the money, and you will stand alone in a new country with a horrible experience in new york! and might end up going back home without help from this ***** company!!

Hola, yo fui au pair en Estados Unidos y me experiencia fue espectacular!!!
Debo admitir que al principio es duro, por que todo es nuevo. Tenia miedo dejar a mi familia, a mis amigas y viajar a un pais que nunca habia estado antes. Es mas, esta fue la primera vez que sali de mi pais.
Mi ingles era intermedio, y aunque tenia experiencia cuidadno a mis hermanos, sabia que la responsabilidad era mayor.
La conclusion de mi experiencia: Creci como persona, aprendi de otra cultural y mi ingles mejoro notablemente. Mi familia gringa, me dio todo el apoyo que necesitaba, incluso cuando sus hijos no me querian hacer caso. Aprendi que aunque somos diferentes y crecimos en culturas diferentes podemos aprender los unos de los otros.
Por otro lado, cumpli uno de mis suenos, conoci NY y ahorre plata para pagar mis estudios.

This agency is a joke. THey do not care about aupair or host family but care more about money. I spent 11 months as an aupair and it was the worst time in my life between living with alcoolic parents and terrible kids without any education.
I think the agency should tell the world how terrible it is before selling their product (family or aupair) and pretend that everything would be great and that they support you. There is crazy family in the program just as there is crazy aupair too but what the agency check in both side is minimum as soon as we pay.
This is ridiculous and I really hope that a lot of people are going to read this comment and think twice before trusting this company. Do not hesitate to check their reviews outside their website.. Aupairs are not slaves, that all I want to say.

I was an au pair back in 2010. I had a great family in New Jersey with three girls between 10 and 15. My local contact from Cultural Care in the area was super nice and helped me a lot. Being an au pair is of course ups and downs, after all you live with a family for a year. I grew a lot during my year and went from being a teenager to a grown up. My family really welcomed me into their home and I got to be part of all of their traditions and family gatherings. I think anyone who wants to explore the real America should go as an au pair. You really get to become a "local" and know the culture for real.

I have traveled to the US with Cultural Care Au Pair, and I couldn't have been happier with my experience! Right from the start the staff at CCAP were very helpful and friendly, and i felt that they were there for me whenever I needed anything. This lasted through my whole year, I always knew I could ask for help and support.
Being an au pair didn't only bring me a second family that I love more than anything, it also gave me tools for my future! Having lived in a different country and culture developed my communication skills a lot. I also matured as a person and became more independent and confident. I got to travel around the States and meet a bunch of new people, as well as study at a college. I had so much fun during my time as an au pair and I would never change it to anything else. I am happy I decided to travel through Cultural Care Au Pair and I can definitely recommend this program!

I gained a lot of personal development during the time on the program. Including; conflict negotiation and experience, cummunicatin skills in general intercultural communications skills in particular. I learnt what it is to be flexible and open, two lessons that will empower your proffessional carreer a lot. In addition I gained an incredible personal network, benificial for both my personal life as well as my carreer.

Traveling to the US as an au pair, has been a lifetime experience. Not only have I got so many new experiences and seen amazing places in the US, I have also got a second family on the other side of the world and grown a lot on a personal level. I've gotten more independent, more open and definitely also a lot stronger as a person. I took care of the sweetest little baby boy and had an amazing time with him. It was great to be able to share my passion with taking care of children and to explore a new culture and obtain new friendships.
It's no secret, there have been hard moments as well, with home sickness and misunderstandings with the family or stressed out from the classes, but all in all, it has only made me a stronger person and it takes a lot more to make me stressed out now.
I can only recommend traveling a year as an au pair!