Welcome to the guide

By Nikki and Sophia, Founders of The Village Co

At a glance: This guide covers every kind of childcare available in New Zealand, what it costs, which government subsidies you might be eligible for, and how to choose what's right for your family. Written by the founders of The Village Co, an NZ platform connecting families with vetted, AI-matched babysitters across Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and beyond.

When we started The Village Co, we weren't trying to build a business first. We were trying to solve our own problem.

Between the two of us, we have four kids. And like most parents, we hit that point where the juggling stopped being something we could just push through. Work commitments, school pickups, the rare and precious date night, the even rarer moment of just... nothing. We needed help. Not a Pinterest board of tips. Actual, reliable, trustworthy help.

So we went looking. And what we found was a system that, frankly, made no sense.

There were daycare centres with waitlists longer than some pregnancies. There were nanny agencies that felt like they were built for a different decade, with fees to match. There were apps where you'd scroll through a list of strangers and just... hope. And underneath all of it was a tangle of government subsidies and schemes that nobody had ever properly explained to us, even though we'd both been paying tax our whole working lives.

We figured if two reasonably switched-on mums found this confusing, a lot of other parents probably did too.

That's the gap this guide is for.

What you'll find in this guide

This isn't a guide that tries to tell you there's one right way to do childcare. There isn't. What works for one family — two days of daycare, a grandparent on Fridays, an after-school sitter for the rest of the week — might look nothing like what works for the family down the road. The "right" answer is the one that actually works for your life.

What we've tried to do instead is lay out, clearly and honestly, what your options actually are in New Zealand:

• The different types of childcare available — from ECE centres and kindergartens to Playcentre, Kōhanga Reo, nannies, and babysitters — and what each one is actually like day to day.
• What it all costs, with real numbers, because vague answers don't help anyone budget.
• The government support you might be entitled to — 20 Hours ECE, the Childcare Subsidy through Work and Income, FamilyBoost, Best Start, and OSCAR for school-age care — explained in plain English, without the jargon.
• How to actually choose, with questions worth asking yourself (and any provider) before you commit.

We're a babysitting platform, so you'll notice we talk about babysitters and how that fits alongside everything else. We think it's a genuinely useful option for a lot of families, particularly for the gaps that other types of care don't cover — the after-school hours, the date nights, the days when your usual plan falls through. But this guide isn't a sales pitch for The Village Co specifically. It's the guide we wish someone had handed us.

A quick note on AI and humans

You'll see this come up again later in the guide, but it's worth saying upfront: The Village Co. uses AI to help match families with sitters quickly, but every single sitter on our platform is personally interviewed and vetted by a real person on our team before they ever join — police check, ID verification, references, the lot. We think that combination — the speed of technology with real human standards behind every person on the platform — is how childcare matching should work. It's part of why we built this guide the way we did too: useful information, written by people, checked by people, for people who are tired of guessing.

If you're reading this from Australia

We're not live in Australia yet, but we're working on it. Most of what's in this guide is NZ-specific, but if you're across the ditch, the broad shape of the system is similar — Australia's equivalent to NZ's subsidy schemes is the Child Care Subsidy (CCS), recently expanded so all eligible families get at least three days of subsidised care a week. We'll flag the AU equivalents where it's useful, and update this guide properly once we've launched there.

Let's get into it

Start with Chapter 2: Finding childcare in NZ for the lay of the land, or jump straight to whichever chapter answers the question on your mind right now. However you got here, we're glad you did.

— Nikki and Sophia

FAQ

Who wrote this guide? This guide was written by Nikki and Sophia, the founders of The Village Co, a New Zealand platform that matches families with vetted babysitters using AI-assisted matching, with every sitter personally interviewed and vetted by a real person before they join.

Is this guide only about babysitters? No. This guide covers all the main types of childcare available in New Zealand, including ECE centres, kindergartens, Playcentre, Kōhanga Reo, nannies, and after-school care, alongside babysitters.

Does this guide cover Australia? Not yet in detail. The Village Co hasn't launched in Australia, so this guide focuses on New Zealand. Where relevant, we note the broad Australian equivalent (such as the Child Care Subsidy), and we'll expand this guide once we launch there.