Search results

This paper is to develop a quality measure to evaluate the quality level of child care service in the regional level. By utilizing the biannual intensive child care statistical reports, ten variables are integrated and summarized as a quality measure for child care service in regional level by employing Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Conclusively, it is possible to get a comprehensive measure and the measure obtained from data between 2003 and 2008 illustrates the difference in child care service quality among regions over years. With the measure developed by this research, each region can also get very good insight into what kinds of factors of child care service should be paid more attention to in order to improve the quality of its child care service. Moreover, the measure obtained in this paper is proven reliable and robust in that it reflects the quality of child care service in each region and gives us statistically uniform quality scores with a different data set.

This paper proposes a scheme to estimate the technical efficiency at child care centers for the less‐than‐three‐year‐old infants by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and to manage the quality of care service through implementing flexible and efficient government subsidy system. The result of technical efficiency estimation shows that there exists the heterogeneity in technical efficiency a substantial opportunity for improvement in technical efficiency across child care centers. This result implies that government may bring up the competition by giving subsidy differentially based on efficiency and use the money which has been used inefficiently other purposes. Both can improve the quality of child care service.

In Australia, the child care industry has experienced substantial growth since 1991 resulting in a proliferation of child care centres throughout the country, to the point where supply of child care places is now in excess of demand. As a result, child care marketers now compete within a turbulent environment where it is vital to satisfy and retain customers in order to survive. Seeks to increase our knowledge of child care services consumption behaviour, and assist the child care marketer to understand their consumers and the difficulties they face as they interact with a service that they do not experience first hand. A self‐administered survey instrument was developed and administered to a sample of child care service switchers. The results indicate significant findings within, and between choice, switching, and post‐switching dimensions. The exploration of decision‐making areas provides a number of practical implications not only for the child care marketer, but also for government policy makers, child care consumers, and service providers in general.

Tests, through a child care choice survey, a number of hypotheses put forward by Zeithaml concerning the process of consumer search for services. Finds that personal sources of information about services are far more important to buyers than are mass media sources, that consumers limit their search to one or two service providers, that price and physical attributes of services are less important in choice than experiential, abstract qualities, and that consumers do not generally switch providers voluntarily.

Considers the concept of “employee child care” and argues that it is problematic for a number of reasons. An alternative approach is advocated, based on an integrated, coherent and multi‐functional system of early childhood care and education services for all children and their carers, which does not treat children of employed parents in isolation from other children; examples of this broad approach are given. In conclusion, argues that an opportunity has been wasted to review services in the context of a wider consideration of policies to promote the reconciliation of parental employment and caring for children and of the role of employers with respect to reconciliation. Instead, a decontextualized advocacy of “employee child care” has been able to develop, virtually unchallenged, in a climate dominated by labour market concerns.

Earlier Nordic comparative studies show variation between countries in child welfare practice, reflecting cultural differences, and that case workers share the norms, values and attitudes of their society. Can cultural factors be concretised for discussion? Child welfare workers in Denmark, Iceland and Norway were presented with five child care stories (vignettes) that focused on the ‘threshold’ between preventive measures and out‐of‐home care (consensual or compulsory). Vignette themes included parental neglect, maternal alcohol misuse and youth problems. Study participants gave written answers to the vignettes and took part in group discussions with colleagues. The results showed significant differences between countries in case workers' responses. Variations in arguments, decisions, use of compulsion and working style reflected national views and priorities. A central dimension was how case workers balanced parental interests with children's needs: in Denmark they were reluctant to intervene with parental rights, whereas the Norwegians were more accepting of compulsory decisions to protect children.

The present range and character of child‐care services in Britain have evolved erratically over a long period of time. Structured by a succession of Acts of Parliament, shaped and re‐shaped by the changing pattern of social values, needs and expectations, current provision is both complex and comprehensive. Statutory and voluntary bodies now provide preventive services, shelter and treatment for both the deprived and the delinquent, for the able‐bodied and the handicapped, for infants and for adolescents. Often this care will be provided in the child's own home or in a foster home, but at any one time roughly 40 per cent of the 120,000 children and young persons that are today the responsibility of local authorities will be resident in a children's home.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in local childcare policy that have taken place between the years 2008 and 2016 in the city of Jyväskylä, Finland, and to study how the local gender contract for women is being reshaped via these transformations in local policy.

Case study was applied as a research strategy. Local and national level statistics were used to explore the use of childcare services. Documents regarding the decision-making and administration of childcare in the city were analysed to distinguish the local policy changes during the time period. These documents include city budgets and records from the two municipal boards that have held the administrative responsibility of local childcare policy. The analysis of the data was conducted by using document analysis and feminist content analysis as a methodological framework.

The results show that the overall development in local childcare policy has been towards cutbacks in childcare services and benefits, and towards the marketisation of childcare services. The city has also implemented new, locally specific childcare policies, which constitute a hybrid form of marketisation and neofamilism. Together these developments are creating a new local gender contract, which goes beyond the past previous traditional or modern models. This new local gender contract for women is defined as that of “entrepreneurial homemaker”.

This paper contributes to the research on local social policy by identifying the role of local childcare policy in reshaping the gender contract in a Nordic context. This paper advances the theorisation of the concept of gender contract by introducing the “entrepreneurial homemaker” model of gender contract.

The quality of service delivery and maintenance of service performance relationships potentially depend on the extent to which service providers and service receivers share similar beliefs about a service and its delivery. Congruent expectations facilitate maintenance of service relationships, while disparate cognitions of expectations encumber and work toward terminating relationships (switching behavior). An empirical investigation of service switching in a child‐care setting reveals that highly educated child‐care consumers place more importance on the service encounter, and are more likely to engage in negative word‐of‐mouth about the service in the event of failure. However, in terms of service switching, the perceptions of child‐care providers are significantly different from those of consumers when attributing causes of switching, and examining post‐switching behavior. Provides practical implications for childcare providers, and service providers, in general.

Using Andersen’s (1968) behavioral model of health services use as a guiding conceptual framework, this study examined how receipt of family-centered care relates to the perceived family challenges for families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Data from the 2009–2010 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN) were analyzed for 812 parents of children with ASD.

Multiple regression analyses provided substantive statistical evidence that a child’s race, the adequacy of a family’s insurance, and the stability of child’s health care needs significantly contributed to predicting his or her receipt of family-centered care. Further results suggested a relationship between receipt of family-centered care and the perception of challenge for these families; families receiving family-centered care perceive fewer challenges and feel less unmet need for child health services.

Family-centered professionals provide critical voices in the development of policies and programs geared toward improving the health outcomes of children with ASD and their families.