What the sources say
Immigration’s own Foreign Domestic Helper page describes the role in general terms as domestic chores — the government’s own baseline description of what the position is for. The standard service contract used for this kind of placement, published by JTKSM with the ILO, states it more specifically: household duties, and duties the employer directs relating to the care of children, young people, and other individuals under her charge.
Read together, this covers the ordinary, expected scope of the role — the tasks that make up housekeeping, food preparation, and looking after the people who live in the household, rather than an open-ended "help with everything" that can quietly expand once someone has moved in.
What this looks like day to day
In practice, this covers cleaning and general housekeeping, laundry and ironing, cooking for the household, and childcare or eldercare support for people who live there — the specific skill each of these needs is covered in its own dedicated assessment guide, from cooking to housekeeping to childcare and elderly-household experience.
It’s worth writing this scope down early, alongside the two or three duties that can’t slip in your household — that short list does more to prevent quiet role creep later than any single conversation at the interview stage.
- Housekeeping and general cleaning of the household.
- Laundry, ironing, and cooking for the household.
- Childcare or eldercare support for people who live in the household.
Where the boundaries sit
The scope above has real edges, each sourced separately rather than guessed at here: work at a second household or a relative’s residence, helping in a family business or commercial activity, and car washing are all explicit written prohibitions, each covered in its own dedicated guide with the exact source quoted. Medical and nursing tasks — administering medication, wound care, injections — sit outside the role for a different reason: no single official document sets that exact boundary, but the standard employer guide strongly recommends a trained nurse or caregiver for anything beyond basic support, covered in the dedicated guide on medical-care boundaries.
The second-household, family-business, and car-wash boundaries aren’t a judgement call to make on your own — each traces to a specific document, worth reading directly rather than assuming where the line falls. The medical boundary works differently: it’s a safety judgement the household needs to make itself, informed by the sourced findings in that dedicated guide, since no official checklist exists to simply look up.