Junior Pay, Senior Responsibilities: The Experiences of Junior Child Care Workers

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Sims
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Special Needs ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
International Labour Organisation ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
Care Industry ◽  
Junior Staff ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Equal Work ◽  
Labour Organisation

The child care industry has provision in awards for junior wages. Juniors aged between 14 and 16 years receive 50 per cent of the minimum adult wage, and this increases until the adult wage is received at age 21. However, regulations do not specify responsibilities for junior workers. This study indicates there are many occasions when junior workers are required to undertake the same responsibilities as adult workers. This is of concern as the International Labour Organisation suggests that the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’ is of importance. This study documents examples of junior workers required to work extra hours without pay, or to remain unpaid on the premises until numbers necessitate their presence. Junior workers appear more open to this type of exploitation as they tend not to question such requirements, nor to fight for their rights. If the child care industry is to retain junior wages, it needs to take responsibility for meeting the special needs of junior staff.

Child Care Workers’ Perspectives on Transition Services for Pre-school Children with Special Needs in Hong Kong

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Selena K. W. Lo ◽  
Mantak Yuen ◽  
Ryder T. H. Chan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Special Needs ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Transition Planning ◽  
Children With Special Needs ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
Special Child ◽  
Care Workers

Transitions that all young children have to make (including children with special needs) involve: starting school, moving from kindergarten to primary school, and sometimes moving from one school to another. With increasing awareness of the importance of early childhood education and intervention, transition planning for young children is attracting much more attention and action. Research suggests that there is a relationship between children’s successful transitions and the outcomes of their development in cognition, literacy, social adjustment, and adaptive skills. However, the perspectives of teachers in transition planning were not sufficiently explored in the literature in the Chinese context. This paper focuses on the experiences, ideas, and perspectives of pre-school child care workers on the vertical transition of children from pre-school special centres to other educational institutions in Hong Kong. Individual face-to-face interviews were conducted with child care workers who work in special child care centres. Importance of transition planning for children with special needs, the role of pre-school special child care workers, challenges in the process, and suggestions for improvement are discussed. In particular, methods for facilitating the parents’ choice of appropriate primary schools are shared.

Women, Exploitation and the Australian Child-Care Industry: Breaking the Vicious Circle

1991 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Government Funding ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Australian Child ◽  
Care Industry ◽  
Care Workers

In Australia in the 1990s, a complex combination of industrial and political factors interact with gender to produce the exploitation of child-care workers. Examination of the industry reveals the crucial role that government funding and policy play in determining working conditions. Analysis of the child-care industry also highlights the extent to which conditions in the industry are determined by a complex regulatory apparatus comprising legislation, regulations and departmental guidelines specific to the industry in addition to awards. Concentration on the characteristics of a distinctly female dominated industry reveals some of the limitations of mainstream industrial relations theory. It is clear that neither industrial relations nor feminism has yet provided the theoretical tools necessary not simply to explain the exploitation of women workers in such industries but also to overcome it.

Child care workers’ perception of job worth

1991 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Davey Zeece ◽  
Robert W. Fuqua
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
Care Workers

Selection and Training of Child-Care Workers

1969 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 227-229
Author(s):  
John B. Mordock ◽  
Henry Platt
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
And Training

US SETS RULES ON AU PAIRS

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 95 (5) ◽  
pp. 663-663
Author(s):  
J. F. L.
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Clinton Administration ◽  
Infant Care ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
College Credit ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Au Pairs

The Clinton Administration issued new regulations today for the nation's 10,000 foreign in-home child-care workers that set new standards for those who care for children under 2 years old. ... the rules also require families employing the au pairs to pay them a weekly stipend of $115, up from the current $100 ...the agency will require that an au pair caring for children have at least 6 months' experience or training in infant care ... The new regulations bar au pairs from caring for children under 3 months old. To reinforce the educational aspects of the program, the regulations require au pairs to take at least 6 hours of college credit courses. Families must pay up to $500 for education for an au pair ...

Counter-professionalization as an occupational status strategy: The production of professionalism in Israeli child-care workers’ identity work

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Netta Avnoon ◽  
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
Occupational Status ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Child Care Workers ◽  
Unskilled Labor ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Professional Self

Abstract Recent approaches to professions and professional identity question the premise that professionalization is the ultimate generator of status, showing that the classical model of professionalization does not always coincide with workers’ creative construction of professionalism and professional dignity. Extending these approaches, and focusing on workers’ identity discourse, this study examines how private child-care workers in Israel claim professional status precisely by avoiding formal professionalization and promoting a counter-professionalization ethos. Drawing on field observations and interviews, we analyze nannies’ tacit occupational community dynamics, by which they establish professional rules and boundaries and discursively construct a respected professional self. Their identity-talk reveals a vocational self-imaging based on personal charisma, one that resists training and credentials. This vocational self-imaging allows rebuttal of the nanny stereotype as a low-class uneducated workforce, associated with their ethnicized backgrounds, by symbolically transforming it and using it as a high-value identity resource. This counter-professionalized identity-talk prevails despite the social distinction between senior and junior nannies. Thereby, nannies gain professional status while the professionalization of child care is rejected. The analysis of these cultural dynamics provides a stronger perspective on professions as spheres of identity construction—specifically those ranked lower as unskilled labor—and on workers’ agency behind their ostensibly passive compliance with under-professionalization.

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