Growing up on the Mahurangi Peninsula, Ms Tait went to primary school in Warkworth. Her parents, who took in foster children, moved to the North Shore and she was a foundation pupil at Glenfield College.

“I became a Christian at age 16,” recalls Ms Tait, who left school and went to North Shore Teacher’s College.

“My first teaching job was at Wellsford Kindergarten in 1975, but I decided to study social work and took up an internship at the Bair Foundation Pennsylvania in the United States.”

Joining the Anglican Trust for Women and Children in Auckland, she spent 10 years setting up foster care networks in Auckland. Later she became an ACC rehabilitation coordinator and worked for the Waitaki Safer Community Council’s diversion/ restorative justice and anger management programme.

At 23, Ms Tait became one of the first single foster parents in New Zealand, taking on a nine-year-old foster daughter. At 30 she married a colleague, and acquired several step-children. He died young, and she returned to teaching, later remarrying and accumulating more step-children — 10 in all.

“My family has always been one of additions and alterations,” she observes. “I’ve not had a birth child because I believe there are already enough children to invest in.”

Ms Tait was a founding teacher at Whangaparaoa Kindergarten, and in 1995 bought Peninsula Preschool, a private kindergarten in Tindalls Bay. While raising her foster grandson, she joined the Whangaparaoa College board of trustees, and chairs the disciplinary committee: “It breaks your heart when you see young people going off the rails,” she says. “Earlier family support and intervention could have helped them.

“For some children, life is more difficult from the outset, even in utero their slate has been muddied before it is written on — if you haven’t been cared for yourself you don’t know how to care for others,” she adds.

Fairy Godmothers Inc (FGI), the home-based child-care organisation Ms Tait founded, provides nine hours of free care for people parenting alone and those on low incomes, or in work or training. “We aim for early intervention and effective outcomes, not profits,” explains Ms Tait. “If parents are stressed, children are more at risk, and so we subsidise sole parents, allowing them to take a break and fill their own emotional tanks, or attend training and courses which hopefully create better parenting outcomes.”

FGI adds no surcharge to the government’s 20 hours ECE (Early Childhood Education) for three to four-years-olds, and so makes an early childhood education available to all families, regardless of income or circumstances. “Our 20 hours ‘free’ ECE is actually free,” says Ms Tait, who is encouraged by National’s current welfare reforms. She sees a real need in the community for parenting mentors and family workers who can provide budgeting and other basic advice to ensure children are well cared for. “I believe that programmes teaching basic skills should be compulsory for all young people receiving government assistance. Teens are ill-equipped to become parents, and we need to make changes to ensure that children aren’t just a meal ticket. If someone is being paid to be a full-time parent, the community expectation is that the child will be brought up with an okay standard of parenting.

“It’s imperative we teach teens about parenting and relationships as well as about sex,” she adds.

“Teens often don’t realise that having a child will connect them with someone for life. We’re looking for more care educators on the North Shore and I’d love to see more church folk getting involved,” says Ms Tait, who attends Whangaparaoa Baptist Church. “Caring for children can be an outreach into the community — care educators are an important link in a child’s life and provide role models for young parents. I know women who’ve cared for children for 17 years, and they get invited to graduations, engagements and weddings because they have invested in a child’s life.”

Although it’s not highly paid work, a large portion of earnings are not taxable due to home expenses, and can be claimed as an independent contractor. “This is beneficial for those on a parenting alone benefit who need part-time paid work under the new government reforms,” Ms Tait points out.

As part of ‘paying it forward,’ FGI sponsors children overseas through TEAR Fund and World Vision, and care children collect toys every year for shoeboxes distributed by Operation Christmas Child. “If children don’t have this, the community will continue to pay the price further down the track as the child behaves according to seeds planted in early childhood. Together let us nurture our future by becoming salt and light in our communities.”