Terms of use

Home Steps is not medical advice. Content is general and educational. It does not diagnose, treat, or replace care from lawyers, budget advisors, Tenancy Services, employment advocates, or emergency services.

If you are worried about tenancy disputes, sudden income loss, family violence, or an emergency — contact an appropriate professional or service. In an emergency, call 111. For general health advice you can call Healthline on 0800 611 116 (24 hours, free from NZ).

Checklists and explainers are practical prompts only. They are not legal, financial, or professional advice and must not be used as a substitute for qualified help.

Core Home Steps access for families is intended to remain free as a charitable programme offering. We do not charge families for essential daily use of activities, Today's ideas, or public resources.

The Trust may introduce optional sponsorship, donations, or supporter pathways in future. Any such options will not gatekeep the core experience families rely on for everyday connection.

Home Steps is intended for adults managing household resilience — renters, homeowners, flatmates, caregivers, and whānau planning together. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, or use the service under the supervision of a parent or guardian who accepts these terms on your behalf.

You are responsible for ensuring that anyone you allow to use your account or device complies with these terms.

You need an account to use the Home Steps app. When you create an account, you agree to provide accurate information and to keep your login credentials confidential. You are responsible for activity under your account.

Notify us promptly if you suspect unauthorised access to your account. We may suspend or close accounts that appear compromised or misused.

When using Tiny Steps, you agree to:

• Supervise children during activities and adapt ideas to your child's age, abilities, allergies, and environment.
• Read safety notes on activities and use common sense outdoors, in kitchens, near water, on roads, and around small objects.
• Not upload or share content that identifies children without appropriate consent from those who hold parental responsibility.
• Not use journal notes, photos, or share cards to harass, defame, or expose private information about others.
• Comply with applicable New Zealand law, including laws relating to child protection, privacy, and intellectual property.

You remain solely responsible for decisions you make about your whānau's health, safety, and daily routines.

You must not:

• Attempt to break, scrape, overload, or reverse-engineer the service or its infrastructure.
• Use automated tools to harvest content, accounts, or personal data without written permission.
• Upload malware, unlawful material, or content that infringes someone else's rights.
• Impersonate the Trust, programme staff, or other users.
• Use Tiny Steps for commercial resale, bulk republication, or to build a competing product from programme content without permission.

We may remove content or restrict access where we reasonably believe these rules have been breached.

Activities, articles, packs, branding, design, and other programme materials on Tiny Steps are owned by or licensed to Vector Group Charitable Trust unless stated otherwise. You may use them for personal whānau purposes only.

You may not copy, republish, sell, or redistribute programme content at scale without our prior written consent. Limited sharing — for example, sending a single activity share link to a grandparent — is permitted through the features we provide.

Third-party names, logos, and links (such as Plunket, Healthline, or KidsHealth) belong to their respective organisations. We include them for signposting only and do not claim ownership.

You retain ownership of journal entries, photos, and notes you create. By uploading content, you grant the Trust a limited licence to store, display back to you, and process that content solely to operate Tiny Steps (for example, syncing across your devices or generating a printable story).

You confirm you have the right to upload any images or text you submit — including photos of children — and that doing so does not violate anyone's privacy or rights.

You can edit or delete much of your content in-app. Account deletion requests will be handled in line with our Privacy overview and applicable law.

Some activities can be shared via public URLs that do not require the recipient to log in. Share links are designed to show activity guidance only — not your private profile, journal, or child details.

Anyone with a share link can view that page. Only share links you are comfortable distributing. Do not embed private family information in shared contexts.

Tiny Steps may link to external websites and NZ support services. We do not control third-party sites and are not responsible for their content, availability, or privacy practices. Your use of external services is at your own risk and subject to their terms.

The service may rely on infrastructure providers (such as hosting and database services). We choose providers with care but cannot guarantee uninterrupted availability.

Tiny Steps can be installed to your home screen as a progressive web app. Offline behaviour is limited: some pages and cached content may work without a network connection; account sync, new content, and uploads generally require internet access.

We may update the app, content library, and these terms from time to time. Continued use after changes are published constitutes acceptance of the updated terms, unless otherwise required by law.

Home Steps is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis to the fullest extent permitted by law. While we work to keep content accurate, kind, and useful, we do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for every family situation.

To the extent permitted by New Zealand law, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Vector Group Charitable Trust and its trustees, employees, volunteers, and contractors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss arising from your use of Home Steps —

Nothing in these terms limits your rights as a consumer where those rights apply and cannot be contracted out of.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Trust against claims, damages, and costs arising from your misuse of the service, your uploaded content, or your breach of these terms — except to the extent caused by our negligence or breach of these terms.

We may suspend or terminate access to Home Steps if we reasonably believe you have breached these terms, pose a security risk, or use the service unlawfully. You may stop using Home Steps at any time and may request account deletion.

Sections that by nature should survive termination (including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and governing law) will continue to apply.

Our collection and use of personal information is described in the Privacy overview. By using Home Steps you acknowledge that policy.

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand. You submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the New Zealand courts. If you access Home Stepsfrom outside New Zealand, you are responsible for compliance with local laws where you are.

Questions about these terms or the Resilience Programme can be directed to Vector Group Charitable Trust via vectorgroup.org.nz.

These terms, together with the Privacy overview and any additional notices we publish in-app, form the agreement between you and the Trust regarding Home Steps.