June 2023
*ATTN PROVIDERS AND OWNERS OF HOME-BASED SERVICES*
Over the past few weeks, a home-based representative group has been formed to support lobbying and advocacy work at Government and policy level which the NZHBCA has proudly been part of. This, to date, has involved meeting with Ministers and sharing discussion documents on the unique challenges facing home-based ECE services. We want to future-proof our service type and enable better funding conditions for our children, families, educators and staff to benefit from. The extension of the 20 Hours policy to include 2 year olds prompted this, but we see so much more opportunity in the future to collaborate and affect positive change for our sector TOGETHER.
We believe that connecting services together will have far greater impact and support than trying to stand alone. Our experience so far is that a shared and united voice for our service type has been well respected and, most importantly, heard! It’s election year and there has never been a better time to advocate for the all the things (and people) that make our service type so special.
SO…if you are a provider/owner who would like to join our representative group and have a stronger voice on the things that matter when it comes to home-based provision, please email us your service logo and we can share with you our work to date on behalf of the broader representative group. Together, we already make up a good majority of the sector.
So far as a group we have formed co-branded collective views on the cost of inflation and inadequate funding (for providers AND educators), the 20 Hours ECE Policy and how it could best work for home-based, pay parity, the need for educator COVID closures to be funded and a more pragmatic (and less regulated!) approach to the qualification reporting requirements.
If you want to be a part of our combined and united voice going forward, we would love to hear from you & it would be great to have some of the smaller services recognized on this group.
Arohanui, mai
NZHBCA
(Please also continue to join us as individuals or service owners as we work hard advocating for Home-Based ECE across many areas of the NZ ECE domain).
