NURTURING FAMILIES
Tayla Nasmith’s Mummy’s In Need is now known as Nurturing Families. “In the past year I have changed the name of the not-for-profit charity to Nurturing Families, because I felt that the name Mummys In Need no longer reflected the aim of our organisation, which is to support the whole family and not just certain members within a family,” says Nasmith. (This change is on their social media platform and will soon be assigned to their website).
Nurturing Families remains a New Zealand crisis support agency which provides material aid to families and includes running the programmes Nurturing Arms which is their in-home support; Giggle n’ Grow, the parent support programme; and the Heroes programme, which is the sponsorship programme. While Nasmith’s vision was to expand and make the charity visible in every NZ city, now she has decided it’s better to only focus efforts to their existing locations, these being Auckland and Taranaki.
“The reality is, it’s really difficult to acquire the resources and allocate them properly and because we’re only scraping the
“IT HAS GROWN ME AS A PERSON AND GIVEN MY LIFE PURPOSE.”
surface in Auckland and Taranaki in terms of support and what families need, we believe it’s wiser to put our time and energy in these places and do that properly before we even consider moving on,” she says.
Reflecting that focus includes how the volunteers have increased from 10 to a core team of around 20-30 volunteers that give anywhere from two to 25 hours a week.
“My plans of studying to become a social worker or a counsellor haven’t yet materialised. I still work 14-hour days, so I haven’t been able to start, but they remain my long-term goals.” In the past weeks the team at Nurturing Families have been working non-stop to support families that have been displaced due to the latest floods in Auckland. “We have provided over 500 children and families a combination of food, clothing and the basic essentials.
“Our goals for 2023 are to keep providing the best support we can to existing families and also be able to reach more families who require crisis support.”