Providing educative help at home means that professionals have to enter into the intimacy of families and share daily tasks often for a long time. Family support workers spend many hours alongside parents, helping them with their domestic and parenting tasks. This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study in which the researcher notes and gathers personal accounts relating to material and non‐material exchanges between professionals and parents. It analyses the various forms of exchanges between families and family support workers that are permitted, tolerated or excluded by employers. It shows the informal side of professionals working with parents at home.