How to Hire an Assistante Maternelle in France

Hiring an Assistante Maternelle (assmat) in France: The Complete Guide

An assistante maternelle is a licensed in-home childminder and is one of the most common childcare options for families in France, and often the fastest way in when crèche spots are scarce. But hiring one means becoming an employer under French law, with a real contract, real payroll obligations, and real deadlines. Nobody hands you a manual for this in English, so I decided to make one. So here’s everything you need to know, from finding the right person to understanding exactly what you owe her and everything in between. 

What is an Assistante Maternelle?

an assistante maternelle is a childminder that is licensed by the PMI (Protection Maternelle et Infantile), the department-level agency that oversees early childhood welfare. S/he cares for children, usually up to four at a time, possibly including her own, in her own home, under an agrément (accreditation) that’s reviewed and renewed periodically. This is different frome a garde d’enfants à domicile, who comes to your home instead. 

The agrément is the whole foundation of the arrangement, it’s what makes the position legal, what makes you eligible for CMG (more on that below), and what protects your child. Always ask to see if before you commit to anyone. 

Where to Find One

There are several routes to take when looking for an assistant maternelle. Here are a few that I used:

• monenfant.fr – the official CAF directory of licensed assistantes maternelles in your area, search by location. 
• Your local PMI office, which keeps its own list and can advise on availability.
• You RPE (Relais Petite Enfance, formerly RAM) – there local hubs exist specifically to connect parents and assistantes maternelles and ofter run playgroups where you can meet candidates informally. 
• Word of mouth and local groups; always worth checking recommendations from other families in your area.

Before you Hire: What to Check

A first meeting with a candidate is really an interview, even if it doesn’t feel like one. Beyond confirming the agrément is current, you’ll want a clear picture of her availability, how many other children she cares for, her approach to naps, meals, and outdoor time, and what her backup plan is if she’s sick. This is a relationship you are entering for months or years, worth taking seriously. 

From the ebook: The full hiring process; what you’re actually signing when you commit to a contract and the salary and indemnity math Pajemploi doesn’t spell out for you ; is in After Baby, part of my Expat Mum in France series. 

What You’re Legally Responsible for as an Employer

The moment you hire an assistante maternelle, you become a particulier employeur (private individual employer) under French labor law. That comes with real obligations: a written contrat, a mandatory salary declarations, paid leave, notice periods, and, if the relationship ends, potential severance pay. None of this is optional, and getting ti wrong can mean back pay claims or disputes down the line. 

It sounds heavier than it is in practice, because two systems, Pajemploi and the CCN (convention collective nationale), exist specifically to standardize and simplify it. But you do need to understand what each piece requires of you. 

The Contract

Regular care requires a written CDI (indefinite contract), govered by the national convention collective for particuliers employeurs and assistantes maternelles (IDCC 3239). It sets out hours, pay, trial period, notice periods, and paid leave and it’s mandatory. Not a formality you can skip because you trust each other. 

Signing Doesn’t Mean “Maybe”

This trips up a lot of families and it’s worth being blunt about: once you’ve signd a contract, or even just a promesse d’embauche (a formal pre-contract commitment some assistantes maternelles use before the official contract), you’ve made a real commitment, not reserved a placeholder. If you back out before care even begins, because you got a spot in crèche, changed your mind, or whatever else, French law and the convention collevtive treat that the same way they’d treat ending an active contract: not as a non-event just because your child never actually set foot in her home. 

The promesse d’embauche is a promise of employment for her and a promise of care for you and it’s recognied under the convention collective (annex IV). If either side doesn’t honor it, the other can claim a flat compensatory indemnity, half a month’s salary. Even without that formal document, a signed contract alone has been treated by courts as binding in some cases, so don’t assume a signature carries less weight just because the start date hasn’t arrived yet. 

The simplest way to think about it is this: this isn’t like cancelling a reservation. It’s the same as hiring someone for a job and then telling them not to bother showing up before they’ve had a change to start. If you’re still waiting to head about a crèche spot when you sign up with an assistante maternelle, say so up front, and if you do end up needing to cancel, expect to pay the indemnity and give her as much notice as possible. She’s most likely turned away other families to hold your spot and now she’ll need to fill it as soon as possible. 

Ending for School isn’t a Free Pass Either

A related surprise, at the other end of the relationship: when your child starts école maternelle and you no longer need her, that ending isn’t automatically free just because it feels like a natural, happy milestone. Legally, it’s called a retrait de l’enfant, the same category as any other employer-initiated ending, which means the usual notice period applies, and if she’s been with you 9 months or more, you owe the standard rupture indemnity on top of it. Plenty of families are caught off guard by this precisely because the reasons feels so uncontroversial. 

What to Pay

Pay is set per child, per hour, and there’s a legal floor you cannot go below even by mutual agreement. Two minimums exist, and whichever is high applies:

• legal minimum: 0.281 x the SMIC horaire brut
• Conventional minimum: set by the CNN wage grid, currently the higher og the two and therefore the effective floor.

As of June 1, 2026, that conventional minimum is 4,20€ gross per hour per child (about 3.28€ net) or 4.37€ gross (about 3.41€ net) if she holds the “assistant maternel-garde d’enfants” professional title. These figures are revalorized periodically as the SMIC changed, so treat this as a snapshot rather then a permanent number.

In practice, most families pay above the minimum. The national average sits around 4-5€ net per hour per child, with regional spread. Rates tend to run higher in Paris and the Île-de-France region, Corsica, and PACA, and closer to the legal floor in the West and North of France. Availability drives price as much as anything else: in areas where demand outstrips supply, it’s common for assistante maternelle to se the rate rather than the parents. 

The Indemnités: Real money that isn’t part of the salary

The hourly rate mentioned above isn’t the whole bill. On top of the salary, two separate payments are legally required and don’t show up in that number at all: 

• Indemnit” d’entretien: covers wear and tear on her home, plus water, electricity, heating, toys, and cleaning her apartment. As of June 1, 2026, the minimum is 3.92€ for a 9-hour day (it’s tied to the minimum garanti, not SMIC, so it moves on its own separate schedule). 
• Indemnité de repas: this is only owed if she provides the meals herself. If you supply the food, this one doesn’t apply. 

Both are mandatory, both have to appear as their own line on the payslip, separate from salary and neither counts as pay for the purposes of CMG ot eh minimum-wage calculations above. These are compensations for real costs she’s covering, not part of what you’re paying her to work. Missing them isn’t a small oversight either: she can claim unpaid indemnités d’entretien retroactively for up to 3 years, so it’s worth getting right form the first payslip rather thean treating it as an afterthought. 

A note on the “cap” you may have heard about 

If someone has told you there’s a cap on what an assistante maternelle can charge, that is a common mix-up worth clearning up. There’s no legal ceiling on pay, parents and assistantes maternelles are free to agree on any rate above the set minimum. What actually has a ceiling is the CMG eligibility: if gross daily pay exceeds 5 SMIC horaires brut (around 60€ gross pay per day in 2026), then the family loses their CMG contribution for the CAF and has to cover the full salary themselves. It’s a subsidy cutoff, not a legal cap. Paying more than that is entirely legal and it’s just no longer subsidized.

Converting Gross to Net

URSSAF publishes an official calculator for coverting between gross and net pay for particuliers employerus: Convertir un montant brut/net (URSSAF). It’s worth bookmarking, you’ll use it every time you negotiate a rate or give a raise. 

Pajemploi: Your Payroll Partner

As a particulier employeur, you don’t run payroll yourself, Pajemploi, URSSAF’s dedicated platform for this exact situation does it for you. Each month you declare the hours, the salary, and Pajemploi calculates the cotisations sociales (social contributions), issues the payslips, and, if you’ve opted into Pajemploi+, deducts the net salary directly from your account and pays your assistante maternelle for you. This declaration is also what triggers you CMG payment from the CAF, so it’s not just an administrative box to check. Skipping or delaying it holds up money that you’re owed. 

CMG: Getting Help with the Cost

The Complément de Mode de Garde (CMG) is a CAF benefit that reimburses part of what you pat your assistante maternelle, on a sliding scale based on a household income and your child’s age. It also covers part of the employer social contributions, on top of the salary reimbursement. CAF’s own simulator online will give you a realistic estimate for your situation before you commit to a rate. Just remember the ceiling we covered above: stay under roughly 60€ gross per day per child to keep CMG eligibility intact.

Managing the Day-to-Day

A lot of families keep a cahier de liasion, a shared notebook (or app for some) where the assistante maternelle logs naps, meals, and moods each day and where you can flag anything on your end. It’s a small habit that heads off a lot of miscommunication, especially before your child can tell you about their day themselves.

Changing Her Hours Needs Her Sign-Off

If your schedule changes and you need fewer days or different hours, you can’t just start applying a new schedule. Any lasting changes to hours, days or weeks, is a modification of the contract and it requires her written agreement, a signed avenant. She’s allowed to refuse and refusing isn’t treated as a fault on her part or grounds for you to end the contract without notice. If no agreement is reached, the original contrat keeps applying; you can’t unilaterally impose the new hours or lower the pay. Your only options at that point are to keep the existing terms or go through a full rupture, with the usual notice period and indemnity. Families are often caught off guard by this, a schedule change feels like a simple update, but legally it’s a negotiation she has a real say in. 

Her Vacation Isn’t Automatically Yours

You don’t get to unilaterally set her paid leave dates either. If you both haven’t agreed on her vacation dates in writing by March 1 of each year, she gets to choose them herself, typically 4 weeks between May and October, plus one week in winter, and she isn’t obligated to line them up with your own family’s vacation. That can mean paying her for a week you’re not using her or scrambling for backup care during a week she’s off while you’re still working. Worth putting this on your calendar every January rather than discovering it in June. 

Beyond hours and vactaion, notice periods and what happens if you need to end the contract are all governed fairly strictly by the convention collective, get these wrong and you can end up owing more than you expected. 

When the Contract Ends Unexpectedly on Her Side

Most contracts end in an orderly way, your child starts school or you simply decide to move on. But sometimes an assistante maternelle leaves suddenly and the reason changes everything about what you owe, what recourse you have, and how fast you need backup care. Here are the 4 scenarios that come up most. 

She Resigns with Proper Notice

The standard path; she’s not required to justify her decision, she simply notifies you in writing (registered letter or hand-delivered against signed acknowledgement) and observes a notice period set by her seniority with you: 8 calendar days under 3 months, 15 calendar days between 3 months and a year, one calendar month beyond that. She can ask to skip the notice period period, but only with your written agreement, and she forfeits pay for it if you agree. No severance is owed either way. 

She Stops Showing Up, with No Notice at All. 

This is different from a formal resignation, it’s an unauthorized absence, and it isn’t automatically treated as her quitting. Your move is to send a formal written notice asking her to explain her absence or return to work. If she doesn’t respond, you can then treat it as an implicit resignation. There’s no legal mechanism to compel her back to work, so in practice your priority is documentation (get anything and everything you can in writing) and moving fast on emergency childcare, not pursuing her to return. 

She Goes on Medical Leave

A doctor’s notre does not end the contract, it suspends it. You owe her no salary during the leave (CPAM and IRCEM cover her instead), but you do owe an attestation de salaire so CPAM can calculate her indemnities. You generally can’t end the contract over it: sick leave alone isn’t lawful grounds for dismissal. The one narrow exception , confirmed by the Cour de cassation on May 14, 2025 (n°23-22.583), is a prolonged, open-ended arrêt maladie non professionnel (non-occupational illness, a workplace accident or occupational illness carries stronger protections) that leaves you with genuinely no childcare solutions and puts your own job at risk. In that case, French courts have upheld ending the contrat through the retrait de l’enfant procedure set out in article 119-1 of the convention colletive, provided the real reason is family disruption and not her health. It’s worth stating the reason explicitly in the letter, even though the ruling didn’t strictly require it. A short, defined leave doesn’t meet this bar. 

Her Agrément is Suspended or Withdrawn

This one isn’t a choice on anyone’s part, it’s the PMI, acting over a safety or welfare concern. The moment the department notifies you, the contract ends automatically, with no notice period on her side and no severance owed. You’re legally required to end the contract even if you have full confidence in her and want to continue. You’ll still owe any accrued, unused paid leave and you’ll need to declare the tupture on Pajemploi and start looking for a replacement immediately. 

Across all four of these scenarios, make sure you get the ending in writing, update Pajemploi immediately so you’re not still declaring hours that aren’t happening and don’t wait on backup care until you’re sure how things will resolve.