How Home-Based Works

We also have responsibility for ensuring that education and care is delivered in accordance with the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations and the Licensing Criteria for Home-Based Services. We provide wraparound support for educators so that their practice promotes the education, health and safety of all children enrolled with Tiny Nation. This involves visiting educators in their home regularly to check in, as well as providing training, resources, excursions, guidance and advice in early childhood education and care. Families and educators will have a Visiting Teacher in their area, who holds a current teacher registration and early childhood education and care qualification. They will always be another point of contact when it comes to discussing children’s learning and development and any other Tiny Nation policies or processes. Our visiting teachers provide oversight and support for each of our areas, enabling our educators to get on with the day to day care and education of the children in their care.

Tiny Nation educators are self-employed contractors who are registered to operate their own service under the Tiny Nation licence umbrella. This means that our educators determine their own service conditions – like hours and days of care, hourly rates and early learning philosophy. This is what makes home-based so unique when compared with other early learning service types. Families deal directly with their educator when it comes to their child’s day to day care and learning experiences, payments and any changes they might have to enrolled hours or days. Our educators have their own care contracts with each of their families that sit underneath a family’s enrolment agreement with Tiny Nation. These care contracts provide the basis for which care is agreed between the family and the educator and give you the detail you need to know about when it comes to what you can expect from your educator and their service. Once a family is matched with an educator, the educator care contracts are completed prior to the enrolment agreement with Tiny Nation. This is because in the care contract, families are agreeing to the educator’s specific service conditions, like the days and times they are enrolling with them for, how much they charge per hour and what their availability is like on public holidays. Once families have signed the care contract, they will fill in the Tiny Nation enrolment form to finalise the enrolment.

We provide all educators and families with a “Welcome Home” induction booklet that shares more about how Tiny Nation works and the relationship we have with our educators and families, along with important policies and references. This is intended to make the transition process as smooth as possible for everyone.

Then the journey begins!