‘90s FAMILY : Even Exchange : For years, families relied on faith and good luck when searching for the right au pair. But that is about to change. New regulations will require caregivers to give proof of workexperience--<i> and</i> to undergo screening and training.

Aileen Garrigues hears the au pair horror stories and stows them into her memory along with the other parental frets and worries.

But she has none to share, thank you very much. Garrigues adores her au pair, a 19-year-old from Burgundy, France. Celine Noel speaks charming English, enjoys pushing the stroller around Garrigues’ Marina del Rey neighborhood, is smart, cheerful and capable. She even toted a collection of French nursery rhyme books for Garrigues’ infant daughter when she came over last year.

“I am really, really happy,” Garrigues says. “It has honestly and truly exceeded my highest expectations.”

It sounds like a match made in heaven. In fact, the pairing of European au pairs with American families has been based on a tenuous web of good faith, a bit of luck and a handful of voluntary guidelines.

All that is about to change. A new set of regulations scheduled to go into effect Feb. 15 will impose more screening, training, work and education requirements on the 10,000 young Europeans--mostly women--who come to the United States each year in search of a cultural experience, and on the families who count on them for convenient, in-home child care.

The regulations come in the wake of highly publicized tales of abusive au pairs, which reached a pitch with the arrest of a Dutch au pair in the shaking death of a Vermont baby last summer. The regulations have roused the ire of the au pair agencies, which say the added costs could push the expense beyond the reach of all but the rich. But supporters say the proposed rules are designed to protect children and bring au pair programs back to their original purpose of cultural exchange.

Often, the au pair experience is advertised abroad by the nonprofit au pair agencies as a way to see America. In the States, however, it is pitched to middle- and upper-middle income families as affordable child care, says Jim Morgan, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Information Agency. The USIA is the federal office that oversees the 8-year-old au pair program. The agency set the new regulations.

Those mixed messages brought a flood of applicants on both sides of the Atlantic and a lot of mismatched expectations.

“It grew very, very quickly over the years,” Morgan says. “The thing just got out of hand, and it became primarily a work program.”

And work programs are not the business of the USIA, home of the Voice of America, the Fulbright scholarship and other cultural exchange programs. For that reason, bureaucrats recommended ending the programs in 1987 and 1990, but Congress granted reprieves. In October, Congress ordered USIA to write and enforce specific regulations after stories mounted about alleged abuses.

Under the regulations, au pairs and host families must undergo criminal checks and psychological screening. Au pairs must also complete 32 hours of child safety and development training before they join a family. Host families must sign an agreement limiting the au pair to a 45-hour workweek.

A key regulation still opposed by the au pair agencies is that the caregivers--usually women 18 to 25 years old--have six months of documented child-care experience. That could be the death knell for au pairs, says Bill Gustafson, director of eurAuPair, part of the nonprofit American Scandinavian Student Exchange in Laguna Beach.

“Ninety-nine percent (of au pairs) have not had six months of ongoing child-care experience,” Gustafson says. “That’s going to be a problem.”

*

It’s a problem because, traditionally, au pairs are young students taking a break from school, he says. Most have only informal baby-sitting experience. As the regulations’ effective date draws near, Gustafson says, au pair agencies are trying to persuade the USIA to modify that rule.

“That will mean the difference between our continuing (au pair matches) and not,” he says.

A spokeswoman for another agency didn’t expect such dire consequences.

“We feel that it’s positive and that families with young children are assured of au pairs with (child care) experience,” says Diane DuToit, program manager for Au Pair Care, part of AYUSA International in San Francisco.

Families will pay more for au pair child care, which averages about $12,000 a year. The new regulations require host families to offer up to $500 for schooling, a $200 increase. Personal stipends were also increased slightly, from $100 to $115 a week. Agencies will likely pass on the expense of the additional screening and training.