About Us
WELCOME TO NURTURED AT HOME
Nurtured at Home started up in 2014, and we’ve been on an awesome ride ever since. From our relatively small beginnings at home to now covering all of Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay, Gisborne, Taranaki, Palmerston North and Wellington, we’ve stayed true to our Philosophy and Guiding Principles which essentially is to recognise children as our first priority. In addition to this, we strive to provide an exceptional experience for our community of parents and educators, and we would like to thank our community for joining us and continuing to support us.
We hope that for those of you considering becoming part of the Nurtured at Home team, as a parent or an Educator, that you join us and allow us to earn the right to partner with you every day and we welcome you to become a part of our incredible journey.
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September 2013
Nurtured at Home was created with a simple idea of "children are our first priority". Like most great ideas, this one was thought up sitting at Petra’s kitchen table just out of Tauranga. A significant amount of time was spent creating our policies and procedures to ensure our service was built around quality interactions with children in our care, their families and our Educators.
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February 2014
Petra recognised that quality interactions start with the team of Visiting Teachers and support staff, so made the commitment to employ the very best. This started with Pam Wardrope who now leads our BOP team and ensures that everything relating to the quality of our interactions with our children, Educators, and families exceeds Ministry of Education criteria.
We chose Auckland as our first area to open up, even if this did mean Petra virtually living in Auckland. We were overwhelmed with the response we received and since then we have substantially added to our team and now cover all areas of Auckland.
-
July 2014
Moving closer to home, Petra opened up throughout the wider Bay of Plenty region in July 2014. Working from an office down an alley and under the University of Waikato’s Tauranga campus building, this was also our first official ‘home’. We employed our first administrator to support Petra and Pam so they could focus on "children are our first priority".
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January 2015
Numbers continued to grow in Auckland and so did our team, and we quickly outgrew our two rented offices in Ellerslie. We moved into our current Auckland office in Penrose where we can now accommodate our team, resources and toy library.
-
April 2015
Gisborne beckoned us. It wasn't our intent but a group of Educators heard about what we offered and asked us to meet with them. Over two years later, we have grown tremendously in the area, and those original Educators are still with us.
-
October 2015
In 2015, Petra decided she wanted to move her family back to the Waikato so facilitated this by opening up in Hamilton. Really, she wanted to be closer to her son (poor chap) who goes to school in Hamilton. Since then we’ve become a truly Waikato-wide business supported by a wonderful and diverse team of Educators, Visiting Teachers and support staff.
-
January 2016
With the rapid growth in Auckland and Tauranga, our miniature office down an alley in Tauranga (although handy to all the shops) had been outgrown and we needed somewhere for our administration team; three sharing a desk was ok if they weren’t in the office at the same time. We also felt that when one had to use the bathroom it would be nice to access this indoors, rather than exit the office, head into an underground carpark using a keypad, wait for access via a huge rolling carpark door, and then head into the far, dark corner. So we purchased a homely property on 15th Avenue to become our BOP office and administrative hub.
-
June 2016
June saw us open in the Hawkes Bay. Once again, we were warmly received and we continue to grow and spread throughout the region.
-
October 2016
Winners of the Westpac Service Excellence Awards and Finalist in the Supreme Business of the Year Award! This was recognition of all the hard work that our entire team (Educators and staff) put in each and every day to ensure that "children are our first priority".
-
March 2017
You know you’ve purchased far too many vehicles when you appear in a car manufacturer's magazine. During March, we featured in the Suzuki Life magazine. Why did we pick the Suzuki Swift? Because it matched our "bubbly personality". Check out the rest of the article here www.suzuki.co.nz/suzuki-life/news/article/nurtured-at-home/527140
-
July 2017
We were offered another Homebased service in the Waikato, and subsequently purchased this to complement our existing business in Waikato. Sounds simple, but the effort put in by the wider Nurtured at Home team to bring this all together over a short period of time was incredible.
-
September 2017
Our new website is now up and running. We actually thought our old one was still pretty relevant but we like to be innovative and a market leader. We hope you enjoy! If you think we’re doing things well, tell others and if you think we can do things differently, then tell us what and why, and convince us. You may be surprised to know that some of our best ideas haven’t come from us; rather they have come from the communities we operate in.
-
October 2017
Nurtured at Home was placed 9th at the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards for the fastest growing company in New Zealand. The amazing growth was only possible due to all of our staff, Educators, families and whānau as word-of-mouth continues to be one of our best forms of advertising.
-
March 2018
We made the decision to purchase a Nanny service based in Wellington, providing Nurtured at Home with an alternative option to quality homebased care and education. We rebranded the service to Nurtured at Home – Nannies Plus with new logo and website.
This month also saw us open in the Taranaki region as we had received enquiries over previous months. Again, we have been warmly received and the region is growing strongly.
-
Children's Parties
Over eight days each December, Petra and Aaron travel 2,700 kms and attend 13 children’s Christmas parties across all our regions. Together they love meeting our Educators, families and children and we get to enjoy our very own visit by Santa Clause, Hana Koko.
-
Continuing to Grow
We just collected our 32nd Nurtured at Home sign-written car this week. We are excited to continue to grow at this rate – that’s 1 new vehicle every two months. As ongoing changes in the homebased sector continue, with services closing, merging or selling, Nurtured at Home has remained a privately owned family-based quality service, focussing on what’s important to us: providing a quality service committed to children being at the centre of every decision we make. Our continued growth is evident of our quality and also our new Suzuki Swift!
-
Colour Your Day
Today our employees commemorated the tragic events of 15th March with “Colour Your Day”, taking a moment to remember those families directly affected, and we made a generous donation to the fundraising account. Nurtured at Home has also made a donation to St John Ambulance and we would like to acknowledge the amazing work that all emergency services have done to support the New Zealand Police over this time.
-
Open in Palmerston North
Nurtured at Home has opened in Palmerston North! We are pleased to welcome new Educators and families to the Nurtured at Home team.
-
Annual Conference
This month, we celebrated our five-year anniversary at our annual conference. Thank you to all our staff, Educators, families, and whanau, who have supported us.
-
Fleet of Cars
Nurtured at Home recently added another two cars to its fleet - one going to Wellington and another to Waikato. This brings our total to 34 cars that you will see around the regions.
-
Celebrating 2019
Aaron and I take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all our Educators, Nannies, family/whanau and children, Visiting Teachers and Admin Staff that are a part of the Nurtured at Home team. Without all of you, your dedication, commitment, contribution and continued support of our service, we would not have such an amazing service.
-
COVID 19 Alert Level 4
On 25th March 2020, Nurtured at Home joined New Zealand for a nationwide lockdown at Alert Level 4. Petra and Aaron, along with our Visiting Teachers, continued to support our Educators and families health and wellbeing during this time via social media.
-
Online Learning Alert Level 2
As New Zealand moved to Alert Level 2 and ECE services reopened, many of our Educators and families returned to care. Nurtured at Home also started daily online learning activities to support those children and their families who were not yet returning to care.
-
ECE Top 10
We work hard to build relationships with our Educators, Nannies, and whānau. So to make the NZ Herald's Top 10 list really is a testament to having wonderful Educators and Nannies, a great bunch of Visiting Teachers and Administrators and families that trust all of us to care for their precious children!
Timeline
September 2013
Nurtured at Home was created with a simple idea of "children are our first priority". Like most great ideas, this one was thought up sitting at Petra’s kitchen table just out of Tauranga. A significant amount of time was spent creating our policies and procedures to ensure our service was built around quality interactions with children in our care, their families and our Educators.
February 2014
Petra recognised that quality interactions start with the team of Visiting Teachers and support staff, so made the commitment to employ the very best. This started with Pam Wardrope who now leads our BOP team and ensures that everything relating to the quality of our interactions with our children, Educators, and families exceeds Ministry of Education criteria.
We chose Auckland as our first area to open up, even if this did mean Petra virtually living in Auckland. We were overwhelmed with the response we received and since then we have substantially added to our team and now cover all areas of Auckland.
July 2014
Moving closer to home, Petra opened up throughout the wider Bay of Plenty region in July 2014. Working from an office down an alley and under the University of Waikato’s Tauranga campus building, this was also our first official ‘home’. We employed our first administrator to support Petra and Pam so they could focus on "children are our first priority".
January 2015
Numbers continued to grow in Auckland and so did our team, and we quickly outgrew our two rented offices in Ellerslie. We moved into our current Auckland office in Penrose where we can now accommodate our team, resources and toy library.
April 2015
Gisborne beckoned us. It wasn't our intent but a group of Educators heard about what we offered and asked us to meet with them. Over two years later, we have grown tremendously in the area, and those original Educators are still with us.
October 2015
In 2015, Petra decided she wanted to move her family back to the Waikato so facilitated this by opening up in Hamilton. Really, she wanted to be closer to her son (poor chap) who goes to school in Hamilton. Since then we’ve become a truly Waikato-wide business supported by a wonderful and diverse team of Educators, Visiting Teachers and support staff.
January 2016
With the rapid growth in Auckland and Tauranga, our miniature office down an alley in Tauranga (although handy to all the shops) had been outgrown and we needed somewhere for our administration team; three sharing a desk was ok if they weren’t in the office at the same time. We also felt that when one had to use the bathroom it would be nice to access this indoors, rather than exit the office, head into an underground carpark using a keypad, wait for access via a huge rolling carpark door, and then head into the far, dark corner. So we purchased a homely property on 15th Avenue to become our BOP office and administrative hub.
June 2016
June saw us open in the Hawkes Bay. Once again, we were warmly received and we continue to grow and spread throughout the region.
October 2016
Winners of the Westpac Service Excellence Awards and Finalist in the Supreme Business of the Year Award! This was recognition of all the hard work that our entire team (Educators and staff) put in each and every day to ensure that "children are our first priority".
March 2017
You know you’ve purchased far too many vehicles when you appear in a car manufacturer's magazine. During March, we featured in the Suzuki Life magazine. Why did we pick the Suzuki Swift? Because it matched our "bubbly personality". Check out the rest of the article here www.suzuki.co.nz/suzuki-life/news/article/nurtured-at-home/527140
July 2017
We were offered another Homebased service in the Waikato, and subsequently purchased this to complement our existing business in Waikato. Sounds simple, but the effort put in by the wider Nurtured at Home team to bring this all together over a short period of time was incredible.
September 2017
Our new website is now up and running. We actually thought our old one was still pretty relevant but we like to be innovative and a market leader. We hope you enjoy! If you think we’re doing things well, tell others and if you think we can do things differently, then tell us what and why, and convince us. You may be surprised to know that some of our best ideas haven’t come from us; rather they have come from the communities we operate in.
October 2017
Nurtured at Home was placed 9th at the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards for the fastest growing company in New Zealand. The amazing growth was only possible due to all of our staff, Educators, families and whānau as word-of-mouth continues to be one of our best forms of advertising.
March 2018
We made the decision to purchase a Nanny service based in Wellington, providing Nurtured at Home with an alternative option to quality homebased care and education. We rebranded the service to Nurtured at Home – Nannies Plus with new logo and website.
This month also saw us open in the Taranaki region as we had received enquiries over previous months. Again, we have been warmly received and the region is growing strongly.
Children's Parties
Over eight days each December, Petra and Aaron travel 2,700 kms and attend 13 children’s Christmas parties across all our regions. Together they love meeting our Educators, families and children and we get to enjoy our very own visit by Santa Clause, Hana Koko.
Continuing to Grow
We just collected our 32nd Nurtured at Home sign-written car this week. We are excited to continue to grow at this rate – that’s 1 new vehicle every two months. As ongoing changes in the homebased sector continue, with services closing, merging or selling, Nurtured at Home has remained a privately owned family-based quality service, focussing on what’s important to us: providing a quality service committed to children being at the centre of every decision we make. Our continued growth is evident of our quality and also our new Suzuki Swift!
Colour Your Day
Today our employees commemorated the tragic events of 15th March with “Colour Your Day”, taking a moment to remember those families directly affected, and we made a generous donation to the fundraising account. Nurtured at Home has also made a donation to St John Ambulance and we would like to acknowledge the amazing work that all emergency services have done to support the New Zealand Police over this time.
Open in Palmerston North
Nurtured at Home has opened in Palmerston North! We are pleased to welcome new Educators and families to the Nurtured at Home team.
Annual Conference
This month, we celebrated our five-year anniversary at our annual conference. Thank you to all our staff, Educators, families, and whanau, who have supported us.
Fleet of Cars
Nurtured at Home recently added another two cars to its fleet - one going to Wellington and another to Waikato. This brings our total to 34 cars that you will see around the regions.
Celebrating 2019
Aaron and I take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all our Educators, Nannies, family/whanau and children, Visiting Teachers and Admin Staff that are a part of the Nurtured at Home team. Without all of you, your dedication, commitment, contribution and continued support of our service, we would not have such an amazing service.
COVID 19 Alert Level 4
On 25th March 2020, Nurtured at Home joined New Zealand for a nationwide lockdown at Alert Level 4. Petra and Aaron, along with our Visiting Teachers, continued to support our Educators and families health and wellbeing during this time via social media.
Online Learning Alert Level 2
As New Zealand moved to Alert Level 2 and ECE services reopened, many of our Educators and families returned to care. Nurtured at Home also started daily online learning activities to support those children and their families who were not yet returning to care.
ECE Top 10
We work hard to build relationships with our Educators, Nannies, and whānau. So to make the NZ Herald's Top 10 list really is a testament to having wonderful Educators and Nannies, a great bunch of Visiting Teachers and Administrators and families that trust all of us to care for their precious children!
Our guiding principles are:
Nurture a love of learning for all those associated with Nurtured at Home, through ongoing research, quality resources, best practice and being part of the community within which we exist.
To engage in partnerships within Nurtured at Home and the wider national and international communities, to share our combined knowledge, resources and passion to set the foundation for each individual child to reach their full potential.
To provide a nurturing, safe place to work where people are valued and true partnerships are fostered through mindful practice.
To be a leader in best practice, and to mentor and engage with communities to raise the quality of Early Childhood Education.
To be altruistic in a meaningful way by supporting causes that recognise and nurture the importance of our youngest children in society.
Our Guiding Principles
Our Guiding Principles are the fabric of our culture and the basis for all decisions made within our business. If it doesn’t fit with our principles, then we don’t do it . . . after all, we promote children as being our first priority. Every day the entire team works hard to work with and alongside our Nurtured at Home family so even though we think we do a pretty good job, don’t take our word for it;
Her bond with my child was very special
Our Educator became part of our family and we became part of hers. Her bond with my child was very special and I loved dropping her off there every day....
Client Name:
Mariana
Nurtured at Home provides every resource you need
Nurtured at Home provides every resource you need and the Visiting Teachers are always supportive and just a phone call away....
Client Name:
Christina
He couldn't have been in better hands
My Educator was amazing with my child; he couldn’t have been in better hands....
Client Name:
Krystal
My child felt very welcomed
My child felt very welcomed and enjoyed her time with her Educator....
They make you feel a part of their family
The staff at Nurtured at Home are very friendly and they make you feel a part of their family....
Client Name:
Kelsey
She really cared
As a parent, all you want is for your child to be in safe and caring hands while you can't be there. My Educator was so loving and gentle; she really cared. This makes all the difference in your transition back into the workforce....
Client Name:
Nicole
What we have been up to
Nurtured at Home
Latest News
Pillars of Nurtured at Home
Growing young minds
Providing a quality programme for children is a partnership between you, your Educator and Nurtured at Home.
Read MorePeople/Whanaungatanga
Building reciprocal relationships and a sense of belonging is vital to ensure quality outcomes for you and your child.
Read MoreLanguage, Culture, Identity
At Nurtured at Home® children are our first priority and we are committed to providing quality care and education in a nurturing home environment.
Read More
