Well Child Tamariki Ora visits are one of the clearest expressions of how New Zealand holds its youngest people. They are free, they are universal, and they are designed to be a partnership between your whānau and a health professional — not an inspection.

What Well Child Tamariki Ora is

The Well Child Tamariki Ora programme is a nationwide schedule of free health and development checks for children from birth to five years. For most families, these are delivered by Plunket nurses, though other providers also offer the service in some areas.

The schedule includes visits at key points — shortly after birth, at six weeks, three months, five months, nine months, fifteen months, two years, and at three-and-a-half to four years. Each visit covers physical health, developmental progress, feeding, sleep, and the wellbeing of the family as a whole.

What it is not is an audit of your parenting. The nurse is not there to catch you out or measure you against a perfect parent template. They are there to make sure your child is doing well, to answer your questions, and to flag anything that might benefit from early attention.

Coming prepared

The most useful Well Child visits tend to happen when caregivers bring their questions. Not the polished, carefully worded questions — just the actual ones.

Is it normal that she is still waking three times a night? He gets really distressed during nappy changes — is there something I should know? I feel like I am not coping and I do not know if that is just tiredness or something else. Should we be worried about the way he walks?

No question is too small. No concern is too obvious. The Plunket nurse has heard them all, and the ones that feel most embarrassing to ask are often the ones most worth asking.

It helps to jot things down as they come to you in the weeks before a visit — on your phone, on a piece of paper on the fridge, anywhere that works. Then you are not trying to remember everything in the moment.

The developmental check

At each visit, your Plunket nurse will look at where your child is developmentally — not to create a pass or fail result, but to understand the whole picture. Developmental screening is a conversation, not a test.

If something comes up — a possible speech delay, a motor skill that seems behind, a feeding pattern that warrants investigation — the nurse will talk you through what it might mean and what the options are. Often the first step is simply monitoring over time. Sometimes it means a referral. In all cases, early attention is far better than late attention.

Tracking your child's milestones in the milestones section of Tiny Steps can give you useful material to bring to these conversations — not as a formal report, but as a way of having noticed and remembered things.

Your wellbeing matters too

Well Child visits are not only for the child. Plunket nurses routinely ask about the wellbeing of the primary caregiver — how you are sleeping, how you are coping, whether you have support around you. This is not box-ticking. It is recognition that children do better when their caregivers are doing okay.

If you are struggling — with postnatal depression, with anxiety, with isolation, with relationship stress — this is a safe space to say so. Plunket nurses are trained to support these conversations and to connect you with the right resources. You do not need to be in crisis to raise it. You can simply say: I have been finding this harder than I expected.

Building a relationship over time

One of the gifts of the Well Child system is that your Plunket nurse often stays with your family over time. They know your child's history. They remember what you worried about at the last visit. That continuity means they can see patterns — both reassuring ones and ones that warrant attention — that a one-off appointment might miss.

Treat your Plunket visits as a genuine relationship, not a bureaucratic transaction. They are one of the most valuable free resources available to whānau in Aotearoa. The resources page has more information about what to expect and how to find your local Plunket service.