Challenges to the infant care profession: practitioners’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper explored the challenges to the infant care profession in Hong Kong crèches, with an aim to contribute to the existing early childhood care literature for reference and comparison elsewhere. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 55 childcare workers and 12 supervisors, followed by interviews with some selected participants to examine the education, experience, training, working conditions and staff–child ratios of the practitioners in crèches, and their perceptions towards the profession. The findings identified the areas for enhancing the education level and training of the practitioners to improve the quality of infant care. The results also indicated the problems of low salaries, unpleasant working conditions and inadequate staff–child ratio in the profession, discouraging high-calibre candidates from entering the field. This paper discussed the implications of the findings and offered some recommendations to raise the status of the infant care profession and the attractiveness of the job for prospective practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Crèche
• childcare worker
• infant care
• practitioners
• staff–child ratio

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr. Wai Ling Chan is the Assistant Professor of The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are in the areas of infants and toddlers’ curriculum, and educational transition. Her most recent publication is about the discrepancy between kindergarten teachers’ beliefs and their practices in Hong Kong. She has also completed a research on the smooth transition of children from kindergartens to primary schools with findings published in a refereed journal.

ORCID

Wai Ling Chan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4939-4146