Home based ECE services

The Education Act 1989 defines home-based ECE services and provides the option of the service being licensed. Home-based ECE services are early childhood education and care services that provide education and care to children in private homes. Government ECE subsidy funding is available to licensed home-based services.

From 1 December 2008 home-based services will be licensed under the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 (the regulations). These regulations require home-based education and care to be teacher led, supervised by a person responsible and meet standards for: curriculum; premises and facilities; health and safety; governance, management and administration; qualifications, ratios, and service size; and other miscellaneous requirements.

The regulations also mean that:

education and care can be provided in a home nominated by the child’s parent, instead of only in the child’s home, or the home of the educator. For instance, two families can decide to share a nanny with education and care provided in the home of one of the children
an educator’s own five year old child who is enrolled in school will not be counted in the maximum number of children allowed in the home-based setting.

Existing home-based services will also continue to comply with the Education (Home Based Care) Order 1992 until transitioned to the new regulatory framework.

This section provides information on the Licensing Criteria for Home-based Education and Care Services 2008, which specify how the Ministry will assess compliance with the standards in the regulations. In this section you will notice that the generic term ‘adults providing education and care’ has been replaced with the home-based specific terms of ‘educator’ and ‘co-ordinator’. These terms are defined in the criteria.

The way the Home-based service complies with the regulations and the criteria will depend on how the service operates, and the number of children and homes. For example a home-based ECE service providing a 24 hour seven day service will have different situations to consider than a service operating 7 am to 7 pm during week days.

A copy of the criteria and information for services licensed for 24 hour seven day operation can be downloaded from the right hand column.