At home in preschool care? Childcare policy and the negotiated spaces of educational care

Abstract

Concerns have been raised across a range of discplinary perspectices about the heightened policy expectations which are being placed on the educational outcomes of preschool services leading to suggestions of over formalisation of the preschool space. In light of these concerns, this paper will explore how new socio-economic expectations around educational care are actually shaping the preschool space. By doing so I will argue that concerns over the formalisation of educational care need to be considered with reference to the different contexts and sectors in which educational care is being provided. In offering a more situated analysis, formalisation processes can be seen as highly contingent, as they are articulated within existing social norms around the care of young children.

Keywords:

• Ireland
• childcare policy
• educational care
• preschool space
• homeliness

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ellie Jupp, Russell Prince and two anonymous referees for their feedback on this paper. I am also grateful to POBAL for allowing me to reproduce their flowchart as part of this paper.

Notes

The County Childcare Committee in Monaghan recorded an increase of 244% and in Cavan of 210% in the number of childcare places created through the first funding programme, the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme.

The appearance of these services was blended to match the vernacular housing in their communities and as such made them difficult to locate during the research. Although the research was based in Cavan and Monaghan, this form of care provisioning was common across the country. The National Childcare Strategy (Office of the Minister for Children 2000, 13) suggested that nationally 83% of provision was delivered through a home conversion or a purchased residential property.