Naomi Stevens

Centre Manager - Community Kids Hoppers Crossing

“Working with children reminds me of how amazing and exciting the world can be.”

I started working in early learning in 1997 and have been working at Community Kids Hoppers Crossing since 2016.  I hold a Diploma in Early Education along with My Cert 3 in Training and Assessing. 

Working with children reminds me of how amazing and exciting the world can be. I love seeing things from the children’s eyes. As an early childhood educator, the role I play in shaping the lives of young children is incredibly important. The first five years are crucial for the cognitive and emotional development of children. As educators, we get to foster that deep love of learning and interacting from the very beginning. We can directly influence a child’s emotional well-being by creating opportunities to become socially competent through building friendships and secure relationships. 

We are a large service - with up to 148 children in attendance each day and majority of our enrolled families stay with us from nursery to preschool.  At Community Kids Hoppers Crossing, we take all reasonable steps to protect children from harm in my care.  As a team, we support and guide each other in appropriate practices through role modelling and professional discussion and to commit to the safety, participation and empowerment of all children.

We truly value continuity of care and know how important consistency is in a young child's life - which is why we our team is mostly made of permanent part-time and full-time educators. We have permanent float educators and utilize the same casual staff for leave cover which enables us to refrain from using unknown educators. This means that the children will always know and be familiar with every educator in the service. Our service highly values continued professional learning and development - we hold regular professional development training and a number of our educators are furthering their studies.

Starting at a new centre can create confusion and anxiety for families.  We conduct a tour of the service, explain all rooms and what children learn in each, introduce them to any team member, show them the staffing board, talk about our programs and what learning we capture and how, advise what technology we use such as the Xplor App/Website, show them our kitchen and menus. We also walk families through the process of filling our enrolment forms, CCS and CWA.

We offer "date" nights to our families as we know how important it is for parents to have a little support and some relaxation together. We do this for a couple of hours up to 4 times a year.

We have a coffee station and parent area where families can relax while dropping off their children. However, if parents can’t stay we have a brekky bag for them to take on their journey to work. 

I believe that open and constant communication with families is the key to building wonderful relationships. 

I look forward to welcoming your family to our centre.