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Early Childhood Education
Napier Family Centre offers both home based and centre based early learning and care options.
These are:
- Bright Futures home based care and learning (0-5 years)
- Sunny Days early childhood education and care centre (0-5 years)
Both options are licenced services by the Ministry of Education and provide education for young children (0-5 years) within the framework provided by Te Whāriki – the New Zealand early childhood curriculum.
As services of Napier Family Centre, we offer affordable and quality early learning and care that is responsive to the needs of children and whānau.
We strive to strengthen our communities through meaningful, reciprocal relationships with families.
We provide innovative learning environments that foster confident, competent children with a strong sense of identity and the skills needed to reach their full potential.
Bright Futures and Sunny Days have serviced the Hawke’s Bay community for more than 20 years and still the values and beliefs of our ECE origins are relevant today:
- To provide every child an opportunity for early childhood learning so all children can start school with an equal level of education.
- To value parents and whānau involvement, recognising parents as first teachers.
- To embrace our bicultural curriculum and the principles of Kotahitanga; Whakamana; Whānau Tangata and Ngā Hononga. To ensure our practices are inclusive of Māori and acknowledge the different cultures of the families participating in our services.
- To provide environments that are nurturing, friendly, safe and secure.
- To provide holistic programmes that offers routines which are flexible; experiences which are varied and challenging; and opportunities for exploration and thinking.
- To recognise and support children as individuals and foster self esteem.
- To reflect, report, document, assess, review and evaluate what we do to achieve best practices
Why does a social service agency offer ECE?
The origins of our thriving ECE services date back to Napier Family Centre’s inception in 1983 with the formation of a playgroup named ‘Arohanui’ based at St John’s church hall.
The playgroup aimed to provide parents a safe, non-judgmental environment where children could socialise and learn with others. In 1987 Arohanui moved to 16 Morris Street and was renamed Napier Family Centre Educare before, in 1991, 466 Hastings Street was purchased and renovated to grow the service into a fully licenced day care centre called ABC 4 Kids with virtually full rolls ever since.
In 2007 this property was sold and a purpose built centre re-named Sunny Days was built at 30 Barker Rd, Marewa. The adjoining property was also owned by Napier Family Centre and in July 2013 the under two’s ‘Pukeko Room’ was added. Sunny Days is now licensed for 62 children.
In 1994 Homecare was established recognising that centre based care wasn’t an option for everyone. Among other reasons, Homecare also meant we could offer parents a way to stay at home with their children and earn an income educating and caring for others.
In 2005 this service was rebranded to Bright Futures enabling the expansion to Hastings and Central Hawke’s Bay. Today Bright Futures teaches and cares for around 270 children across Hawke’s Bay.
Both new brand names show the aspiration for brighter, happier futures that start with early learning.
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