Emergency Plan: What Au-Pair & Parents Should Agree in Advance
Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels
Before the au-pair year begins, the au-pair and their parents should agree a concrete emergency plan — six points are enough: key contacts, insurance & health, a money emergency, communication, an exit plan, and documents. What matters is that each point has a clear „if X, then Y“ rule, not just a good intention.
It sounds like a lot, but it's done in an afternoon and takes a huge amount of pressure off. A good plan doesn't mean something will go wrong. It only means that, in the rare event it does, nobody has to improvise. That's exactly what gives everyone — the au-pair and the parents back home — a calm feeling.
The emergency plan in six steps
Go through the list together and keep everything in one central place — ideally digital (a shared document) and printed once. That way everyone can reach it in an emergency, even without a phone.
1. Gather key contacts
Collect the central numbers in one place: the host family (all the adults), the nearest embassy or consulate of the home country, the insurer's 24-hour emergency line, and a trusted person on the ground (another au-pair, a neighbour, the language-course contact). Store everything twice: on the phone and on paper.
2. Sort out insurance & health
Keep the insurance policy to hand — number on the phone, copy in the document folder. Agree in advance what to do if the au-pair falls ill: who is called first, which clinic is nearby, and does the policy also cover repatriation to the home country? Note any pre-existing conditions and medication too.
3. Secure a money emergency fund
Agree a small emergency budget that nobody else touches. Clarify how quickly the parents can transfer money if needed, and by which route. A second bank card (a backup card), kept separately from the first, prevents being suddenly left with no means of payment after loss or theft.
4. Agree a communication emergency plan
Set a fixed escalation: if the au-pair doesn't check in at all for 24–48 hours and can't be reached, Person A calls the host family; if that leads nowhere, Person B or the embassy comes into play. An agreed chain prevents panic and duplicate phone calls.
5. Write down an exit plan
If the family simply isn't a fit, that's not a drama — it's a normal situation. Talk through in advance how an orderly switch to another family or a calm return home would work: who is informed, which deadlines apply, how the ticket is arranged. Knowing the way out keeps you calmer when in doubt.
6. Store documents centrally
Make copies (a scan and a photo) of the passport, visa, insurance policy, au-pair contract and flight ticket. Keep them somewhere secure that the parents back home can also reach. If an original is lost, a replacement is much faster to obtain with a copy in hand.
The most common mistake is to leave it at good intentions („We'll be in touch often anyway“). Instead, agree a concrete if-then chain: IF the au-pair doesn't check in for 48 hours AND can't be reached, THEN Mum calls the host family — and if that leads nowhere, THEN the embassy. Write these sentences out word for word. Under stress nobody thinks clearly; a ready-made plan does it for you.
Who does what?
Assign responsibility clearly so nobody has to figure it out in the moment. A simple split:
- The au-pair makes sure all contacts and documents are saved and to hand before departure — on the phone and on paper.
- The parents back home know the escalation chain and have access to the document copies and the insurance details.
- The host family should know the rough plan too — above all, who they contact if something happens to the au-pair.
When all three sides know the same key points, the plan works even if one person drops out.
Plan a fixed, relaxed check-in — for example a short message every Sunday evening. This isn't surveillance, it's a calm routine: if the message is ever missing, everyone immediately knows it's time for the next step of the agreed chain.
