Policy structures in Australia, the UK and Canada

This chapter provides a comprehensive account of the policy details that shape the supply and demand of in-home childcare in each country. Based on a structural approach to analysis, the different funding mechanisms, eligibility criteria, regulatory requirements and migration rules are detailed to compare and contrast how in-home childcare is supported by governments in each country. It focuses on how nannies and other forms of in-home childcare are situated within ECEC structures, but also considers broader policy influences, namely immigration policy and regulation. The second part focuses on the intersection of these policy mechanisms to highlight some tensions and inconsistencies in governments’ approaches to supporting in-home childcare. This chapter provides a foundation for Part 2 of the book, which turns to the rationales and implications of in-home childcare policies.

Restructuring care: comparative policy developments

This chapter presents historical overviews of in-home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada. It discusses the policy trajectories across these countries within the context of early childhood education and care policy and migration policy. Particular attention is given to debates about how childcare policies and funding positioned home-based care arrangements – in both the caregiver and child’s home – across the public, private, informal and formal domains. In all three countries similar debates took place regarding the role of care versus education across the public and private, and formal and informal spheres. Dominant ideas about the care of young children being the responsibility of the family hindered the success of advocacy efforts, particularly by the feminist movement, for regulated, centre-based early childhood education and care. However, by looking at the details of the debates, pressures and actors through the lens of in-home childcare, contrasting attitudes are revealed.

Introduction

This chapter covers the definition of in-home childcare and introduces the broad trends that underpin the restructuring of early childhood education and care and domestic care work. This includes an overview of recent trends and shifts surrounding women’s and maternal workforce participation, children’s attendance in formal and informal types of care, and the prevalence of in-home child care in each of the three English-speaking liberal welfare countries that are the focus of the book - Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada. These trends are also presented in relation to other developed countries across the OECD countries. It introduces how these demographic changes and shifts in policy structures render the need for greater attention to the place of in-home childcare. It also provides a policy snapshot of in-home childcare in the three focus countries, outlining the funding structures, regulation and migration context surrounding ECEC and in-home childcare.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes by bringing together the previous chapters to consider the significance of the findings. In particular, it reflects on: what has changed, why it is has changed, and why it matters for social policy. It provides some further thoughts about the significance of the book for the concept of care culture and for regime typologies. It summarises how the patterns, policies and cultures of in-home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada differ in multiple ways, in relation to funding, regulation and immigration. Some policy lessons and best practices are outlined in order to improve inequities among families, quality for children, and working conditions for care workers. It is argued that by using in-home childcare as a lens to analyse and compare ECEC policy, and by incorporating migration policy into the analysis, the differences among this liberal welfare regime type are magnified.

Cultures of in-home childcare

This chapter brings together discussions from earlier chapters to understand the dynamic of these distinct care cultures. It considers the embedded norms and assumptions about the objectives of and responsibility for ECEC, and the role of migration policy in facilitating childcare in the home. The distinctive cultures of care are linked to the histories of childcare policy, policy systems and practices, rhetoric and rationales for different forms of ECEC, and the reinforcement of inequalities in the provision of in-home childcare. This chapter draws on policy debates about inequality in order to identify discourses that reflect distinct cultural ideas about the provision of in-home childcare. In each of the study countries, the ‘problem’ of in-home childcare is represented in different ways in policy debate and discourse. The policy debates revolve primarily around the three inequalities explored in the previous chapter: gender, class/income and race/migration.

Intersecting inequalities

This chapter builds on Chapter 4 by analysing the intersection between childcare and migration policy. It illustrates how emphasis on a single policy area has implications for intersecting issues of gender, income/class and race/migration. These intersecting issues of gender, income/class and race/migration are experienced by families (mothers, parents and children) and by care workers. The analysis examines how policies addressing inequalities experienced by one social group can, in practice, have negative implications for other social groups involved. For example, policies designed to increase mothers’ workforce participation to address gender equality in the workplace often overshadow the working conditions and inequities experienced by women performing the care work. This issue is exacerbated for in-home childcare, as workers are often subject to few regulations and their work is largely invisible, in the private and informal domain.

Restructuring care: concepts and classifications

This Chapter discusses the complexities of defining ‘in-home child care’, which are linked to broader conceptualisations of care and the welfare state that cut across the informal/formal and public/private domains. Key terms that are central to the analysis of care analysis are discussed, including informalisation/formalisation, privatisation, marketisation, familisation and commodification/decommodification. The chapter also outlines and explains the emergence of the term ‘social investment’, an idea that has driven Western (and some developing) countries’ recent investment in ECEC. Governments tend to rationalise involvement in the funding and delivery of ECEC in relation to perceived needs and policy problems. This part of Chapter 2 presents key social investment narratives, specifically as they relate to rationales for public spending on ECEC. The concepts of ‘care ideals’ and ‘care culture’ are also introduced.

Rhetoric and rationales for in-home childcare

This chapter examines different interpretations and objectives of in-home child care in Australia, the UK and Canada, and the ways in which these diverging interpretations are reflected in the policy mechanisms of ECEC that facilitate, or do not facilitate, different forms of regulated and unregulated in-home child care. It brings together scholarship on early education and women’s workforce participation to present different reasons and rationales for government investment and spending on ECEC. National governments and advocates, and international organisations, increasingly emphasise a human capital approach to social policy. This frames ECEC around children’s ‘early learning and development’ and concerns about child poverty, which often extends to include parents’ workforce participation. The chapter is based on analysis of primary policy documents and interviews conducted with key policy stakeholders across the three countries. The final section discusses tensions and contradictions across and within countries in relation to two dichotomies.