The Politics Of Australian Child Care

This revised edition is a political history of child care in Australia from the 1890s to the late 1990s.

Care for Australia's children and elderly is provided in a mixed economy, in which for-profit providers are playing an increasingly important role alongside more traditional government and non-government organisations. Does the growth of for-profit provision affect the quality of services or of jobs in paid care? Does it change the political dynamics of the social care sector in contemporary welfare states? How might service users, their families, and organisations work together to sustain and improve the quality of care services? What theories and evidence help us to understand the process and consequences of the shift toward for-profit provision of social care? In nine chapters by leading researchers, this book explores these and other questions, to inform policy and practice in this key field of social policy.

Demand for childcare has soared over the past decade as Australian families seek to reconcile work and care responsibilities. But the cost of care keeps rising, waiting lists in many metropolitan centres are long, and high quality services are not always available. Australia's system of early childhood education and care is fragmented, and the major political parties have failed to take a comprehensive approach to policy development. So what would a good system of early childhood education and care in Australia look like? In this book, a selection of Australia's leading early childhood researchers, teachers, advocates and social policy experts consider: The goals of a good national system How a high quality and equitable early childhood education and care system can be delivered. What makes quality care? Who should provide and who should pay? Training and professional development for workers Regulation and funding of services The authors offer a comprehensive set of policy principles that would deliver a better early childhood education and care regime for Australian children and their families.

Assembling key experts and activists in the area of Canadian child care policy, this book makes an important contribution to understanding how Canada, with its particular institutions, politics, and values, should design a national child care strategy.

A comprehensive set of policy principles that would deliver a better early childhood education and care regime for Australian children and their families.

Whether childcare is seen as part of society's educational policy, welfare policy, or employment policy affects not only its form and content but also its public image. The contributors in this volume use current polices for the care of infants and preschool children to analyze debates and track the emergence of new state welfare practices across a variety of social and political configurations-and offer some conclusions about which methods work the best.

In Constructing Policy Change, Linda A. White examines the expansion of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies and programs in liberal welfare states, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA. In the first part of the book, the author investigates the sources of policy ideas that triggered ECEC changes in various national contexts. This is followed by a close analysis of cross-national variation in the implementation of ECEC policy in Canada and the USA. White argues that the primary mechanisms for policy change are grounded in policy investment logics as well as cultural logics: that is, shifts in public sentiments and government beliefs about the value of ECEC policies and programs are rooted in both evidence-based arguments and in principled beliefs about the policy. A rich, nuanced examination of the reasons motivating ECEC policy expansion and adoption in different countries, Constructing Policy Change is a corrective to the comparative welfare state literature that focuses on political interest alone.

Child care is a political issue of increasing importance to governments, unions, employers and parents. Once provided by charitable groups and available only to those deemed underprivileged, issues surrounding the provision of child care have now become part of the mainstream political agenda. This book, the first comprehensive history of child care in Australia, examines the factors behind this transition. It also compares Australia's child care provisions with those of other countries, particularly Britain, the USA, and Scandinavia.