Finding a Housemaid in Essen

It is not clear from your message how many hours of assistance you need per week.
For occasional (e.g. once a week a few hours) house cleaning and/or babysitting, you can look for classified ads of people offering such services, e.g. on Quoka or Ebay Kleinanzeigen. It usually costs €10-15/hour in cash.
For more regular arrangements, you have to hire somebody, which is more difficult to find and more costly: At the legal minimum wage (IF you manage to find somebody willing to do it at this price) of €8.84/hour (this will increas to €9.35/hour next year), a 30hours per week helper would cost you around €1350/month (incl. insurance, social security, etc.) and this involves quite a bit of paperwork, as well as paid annual and sick leave.
Let me add that in Germany a full-time helper like this is quite uncommon, unless you are super-rich.
The more affordable alternative, getting an Aupair, is only available to German-speaking households (and you need a spare room to house the Aupair).

Hi Beppi,

Thanks for the info. Just to clarify - what do you exactly mean by "german speaking.households? Do I have to prove that we are speaking in german in my house to hire the au pair?

Since the Aupair programme is meant to enable young people cultural and language learnings, only households that speak German in daily life are eligible to host an Aupair.

I don't want to make any accusations but the idea of full time servants is very controversial. In Europe people expect to get paid properly, have OK working conditions and if working full time expect benefits like health care, vacation and half of their social taxes for retirement etc. paid. This is the law. It is common in some countries to have low-paid live-in servants that get no benefits and are virtually on call 24 hours. This is seen in Europe as slavery. People get away with this in countries without protective laws and people in dire economic situations that take such positions out of desperation.

My advice to people coming to Europe is to learn to clean your own dishes, cloths and bathroom, shop and buy and then cook your own food. If one is actually wealthy enough and too busy then they can consider hiring people to do some of the work and be properly paid. For some this means someone who cleans a couple of hours a week and/or does the shopping. For child care there are is daycare known as Kindergarten - or for after school for the school age kids a Kinderhort Finding a Filipino or Indonesian slave is out of question.

Beppi mention Au Pairs. This is a good system if mutually beneficial but not the same as a housemaid. The duty of an Au Pair is primarily to take care of children for a limited number of hours a day and week. Some associated chores might be included but an Au Pair is not a cleaner or shopper. They come to learn the language and have provided a place to live, food, pocket money etc. in exchange for their services. People sometimes try to abuse Au Pairs by demanding too much and this will ultimately lead to problems and abusers being banned from the program.

Tom is absolutely right: Having an Aupair requires treating them as part of the family, rather than as employee (which they aren't). There are also other restrictions and requirements, which I didn't mention here because the OP would not get to there without passing the language requirement.
If there is an interest, maybe we can discuss Aupair issues in more detail in a separate thread? (We have an Aupair and are happy with her,.)

maybe we can discuss Aupair issues in more detail in a separate thread? (We have an Aupair and are happy with her,.)

Yes Beppi, I'd like that. How can we do this? Can you open a thread for us?

Thanks Tom for the useful info...

You can just start a new thread with a question.

Hi,
Do you still looking for an Aupair? I'm Vietnamese and I'm looking for a job as Aupair in Germany. Can I apply for this job?
Regards,
Annie

You can apply to become Aupair if you're 18-26 years old, have basic German language skills (A1) and are o.k. Withe getting only a small pocket money (not a proper salary, as Aupair is meant as exchange and learning programme, not work).
But you cannot become Aupair with the OP's family, because they don't speak German at home!