Social Care In Europe: England and Sweden - Essay Example

Social Care In Europe: England and Sweden No doubt, the social care in European countries is focused by the differences they possess. Despite of making umpteen attempts in alleviating differences in Europe, the government still faces many obstacles in doing so. The best example is the pre-school childcare in England and Sweden, which is marked by several differences, viewed from a single perspective of ‘child care’. Lubeck (2001) states that there is a difference between ‘child care’ and ‘child education’, both are required regardless of age. (Lubeck, 2001) and England being unable to understand this has focused on ‘care’ while Sweden has implemented both at the same time. England has always been followed by ‘day care centres’ followed by the discourse of ‘child care’ while Sweden from the beginning follows the ‘pedagogical discourse’. The difference lies in the vision of the two countries when it comes to child learning and development. England has recently turned its policies due to the Children Act 2004 towards pedagogical discourse while Sweden has never marked by any policies or provisions. All it has concerned is the child development in a broad spectrum. England in this case has lagged far behind Sweden where it has always concerned with child development due to the absence of parental care. This absence reflects employment status, unemployment or social inequality. In England, the concept of day care centers emerged since World War II, when England was marked by racial and social differences, at that time the day care and nurseries were meant to be for those women who were either single mothers or socially feeble to gain significant status in society. Bracken (2004) while revealing England history states that at that time sufferers were mostly young children and the socially excluded. Schooling was nonexistent for the majority of young people because most schools were private and established for the elite. (Bracken, 2004, p. 1) Thus in England, day care centers were introduced in the nineteenth century with a hope to create difference in the lives of socially excluded group which for one reason or the other were not capable to afford pre-school education and unable to get their children a standard learning environment. Thus pre-schools were governed by single mothers and restricted to children and families meeting criteria of social need (Moss, 2006) Publicly funded day care is seen primarily as a means of enabling mothers, especially single mothers, to work and support themselves rather than being dependent on welfare payments. It is one way of helping families to escape from poverty in England, which is part of the government’s longer-term aims, but the children’s day-to-day experience tends to be a secondary consideration. However, the situation is not the same in Sweden. In Sweden children’s day-to-day activities are considered important for which the parents work. This is the main reason for why Sweden has always focussed its attention towards enhancing child’s experience irrespective of parental concerns. Nevertheless, along with the passage of time, England’s legislation felt the need to get involved into children’s policy agenda and considered the significance in the related areas of schooling and school-age childcare. Not only it considered this particular area of policy and provision, but also it analysed the reform of children’s services which Moss (2006) visualises from the aspect of ‘childcare discourse’ to a ‘pedagogical discourse’, the former he refers to as a ‘fragmented, limited or conservative’ approach while the latter he calls as ‘integrated’ approach which concerns for the well being of not a single child, but all European children. (Moss, 2006) This highlights the major difference one can identify in the Child care reforms and policies in the UK, that first were considered to be meant for only socially needy people while today the child care policies and reforms are destined to focus each and every child in the European context. The initial reforms in the nineteenth century focused the working class mothers whereas today’s reforms are followed and implemented taking into consideration the development and learning of all individuals irrespective of social care and class system. England managed the preschool education while transferring from Welfare to Educational department in 1998, when it considered the school Local Education Authority (LEA) gave provisions to children aged between 2 to 5 years. The 1998 Act imposed a duty on LEA to provide pre-school education in their area. However, after decades of policy neglect and separate development in 1998, the early years pre-school system in England was divided into two services thereby serving two purposes. It was categorised into ‘nursery’ and ‘reception’ in which nursery was meant to assist 3 years old kid and reception was responsible taking into account a 4 year old kid. By April 2004, LEA was successful providing free places for two and half hours of pre-school five days a week to all 3 and 4-year old children. Over the recent years, publicly funded early years education has expanded and developed by the cooperation of private and voluntary sectors, which receive government funding, subject to meeting certain conditions and requirements. According to Goldschmied & Jackson (2003), the policy level of Britain has now changed but in relation to older children. The staffing and training still reflect the old divisions of Britain, which focused on the educational content of care for children living in disadvantaged areas. (Goldschmied & Jackson, 2003, p. 14) History reveals that England has always depended upon its policies, the recent change in England due to which it has open up its vision from ‘single’ child care to ‘every child matters’ is also an example of one of its policies which suggests that socially excluded people are also a part and parcel of England’s society. Under the education Act of 2002, the foundation stage of education in England is 3 to 5-year which becomes a statutory part of national curriculum and measures have also been taken to integrate the pre-school with the primary education. Currently department for education and skills (DFES) has opted a strategy in which all the children between 3 to 4 years are entitled for pre-school education, and the children would be provided with 20 hours of education for 38 weeks per year. Rodd (1995) critically points towards the government regulations, which despite reshaping its policies are unable to regulate the majority of child minders, which are unregistered and untrained. (Rodd, 1995) England since 1998 has focussed more on ‘in-service’ training of children and for this purpose has always increased the work force in the form of classroom assistants, trainers and teachers. One of the main reasons for in-service training seems the government policy, as the policy is focussing on each child’s education rather than segmenting. In this way there is an opportunity for the staff to move upwards in qualification and experience. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that the Swedish state began to demonstrate, by means of legalisation, public interest in the well being of children. In the 18th-century Swedish Agrarian society, child bearing and hence women, too was under strict social control. The development of childminding, like that of the orphanages, in Sweden reflects society’s changing view of its responsibility for small children. In Sweden, state or municipal childminding was unusual prior to the 1930s. So, a large number of children of poor parents were left alone all day without any childcare, because both parents and the older siblings were forced to work to earn a living for the family. (Broberg, 1992, p. 30) In Sweden, pre-school services as a provision were introduced in the early 1960s with a view to provide better development and care for multi-cultural kids. Sweden transferred the responsibility of preschool education from Welfare to the Educational department in 1996, two years prior to England transfer. Sweden’s legislation policies help protecting the income level and position in the workforce of mothers. This is the most profound difference between England and Sweden. England has focussed on childcare while Sweden has highlighted the social and economic factors revolving around childcare and this factor has contributed towards the progress of Sweden pre school education as well as making its economic conditions better than England, where unemployment is common. This is evident from the fact that in 1999, the ratio of Swedish children attending pre-school was 64 per cent whereas today it has left only to 11 per cent. (Sweden 2006a) In 1943, Sweden introduced state subsidies to day care and playschools. These subsidies were brought about by a shortage of male labour in the workforce. By expanding municipal childcare, the number of women in the workforce was increased. These state subsidies were tied to demands for the heads of the schools to be educated in pedagogy, and the legislation paved the way for later demands for the staff to be better educated, even in the specific task of caring for children. Protocols from the Swedish Parliament showed, however, that the broad political consensus that existed regarding public spending on affordable housing and family allowance, contrasted sharply with the dispute about public day care, which caused heated political debates in the Swedish Parliament throughout the 1950s and 1960s. (Broberg et al, 1992, p. 32) Unlike England, teachers were divided into three main professions right from the beginning of the preschool education. There were pre-school teachers responsible for the learning and development of kids for 3 years, school teachers (primary and secondary) responsible for working with children across the compulsory school spectrum. Day care nurseries in Sweden are followed by public childcare aged between 1-12, while in England Public childcare is extended to children aged 1-12. In Sweden, compulsory school begins at the age of seven but prior to that almost all six-year-olds attend voluntary pre-school classes designed to prepare them for the first grade. Children who have yet to start school or pre-school classes for six-year-olds can attend regular pre-schools, family daycare homes and open pre-schools while older children have access to leisure-time centers, family daycare homes and open leisure-time activities. (Sweden 2006a) In legislation practices Britain is far behind Sweden, which has the highest proportion of women legislators in the world, the equalising potential of local participation is borne out. In all parties, the political qualification for women and men’s political as well as working careers do not diverge. A similar tendency is becoming apparent in the British Labour and Liberal Democratic parties and is notable in the current candidate selection processes for the new Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. (Rossilli, 2000, p. 96) This refers to the fact that Swedes women are more carefree due to the economic and social conditions as compared to the British women. In Sweden the potential for children’s learning and enjoyment is offered by outdoor space tends to be overlooked. So, children spend more than half of their time in the open air. Too many nurseries are surrounded by featureless rectangular patches of grass and asphalt. Nursery workers often wish the outside area were more interesting but, having no clear idea of what they want, feel unable to push very hard for improvements. There is no model of good practice such as the British nursery school tradition, which to some extent provides for indoor activities. Compared with the vast literature on indoors play and learning, there is little useful material on planning and using outdoors space. In Sweden, parents are entitled to paid time off work to visit and observe in their child’s school or day care centre (Melhuish and Moss, 1991). Until British people have that kind of enlightened legislation, most parents will not be able to make such arrangements unless they take a day’s leave, which they may not be able to afford. The Employment Act, 2002, which came into operation in April 2003, does at least give parents with children under six the right to ask for flexible working hours, but there are doubts if it will be taken up, especially by fathers (Fletcher, 2003). Sweden, apart from the childcare possesses a well-integrated, and carefully planned national family policy. Among the benefits available to Swedes parents are extended periods of paid parental leave and subsidised child-care facilities providing exceptionally high-quality care to children whose parents have exhausted their parental leave. The system in Sweden did not emerge simply because the Swedes decided it was best for parents to stay home with their young infants or that Swedish children would benefit from out-of-home care. Instead, Swedish family policy was developed because the rapid industrialisation of Sweden and the sustained demands for the products of Swedish industry produced a national labor shortage. In order to increase the number of women who were employed and to increase the willingness of young families to bear and rear future workers, it was necessary to develop a comprehensive system in which women were well paid, in which early child care could be accomplished without professional or financial sacrifices, and in which the assured availability of high-quality nonparental child-care facilities made it a positive experience to have and rear children. The ideological packaging around the system sometimes obscures the basic economic forces that led to its evolution. Of course, the character of the resulting system depended on many unique features of the Swedish nation, but economic forces made a system necessary. (Broberg et al, 1992, p. 9) Studies by Zaman & Amin (2003) refer day care as the second largest cost after mortgage or rent. (Zaman & Amin, 2003) UK probably represent the extremes among those capitalist countries in which it is believed that decisions about child care should be left to individual families, that the cost and quality of care should be set by the competition between the unregulated forces of supply and demand, and that governmental intrusions of all kinds should be resisted on the grounds they would simply reduce efficiency. (Broberg et al, 1992, p. 9) Sweden, whose family policies are widely envied and often cited as exemplary models is a country that aims to provide care of exceptional quality at affordable prices to the majority of its young citizens. In addition, the nation’s history, economy, and ideology are about as unique as its family policies. Sweden is a culturally and linguistically homogeneous country of about 8 million people that has experienced relatively little immigration for several centuries. The dominant political ideology democratic socialism is so well-established that the Social Democratic party has remained in power for all but 3 of the last 50 years. (Broberg et al, 1992, p. 9) Unlike British, Swedes view childcare as a public responsibility, believing it is the state’s duty to ensure that all children receive the best quality care. Although a sizable conservative minority questions the ideological underpinnings of the social system, the socialists have been able to maintain support for a system predicated on the need to simultaneously encourage both men and women to seek satisfying forms of employment while providing their children with care of the highest quality. Moss (2006) while explaining the proposed legislation in the form of Childcare Bill refers a new duty on local authorities make their childcare services secure and reasonably practicable enough to meet the needs of working parents or those making the transition to work. Thus in this context local authorities have a duty to facilitate market provision for parents needing ‘childcare’; while at the same time ensuring an entitlement to early education for 3 and 4 year old children. However in Sweden, establishing a universal entitlement to early years services for all children, the childcare bill embodies and sustains a distinction between ‘childcare’ as an employment-based parental need that local authorities must help to meet and ‘early education’ for children that local authorities are required to meet. (Moss Peter, 2006) The main difference therefore lies in the notion of the preschool education that in UK, the services provide day care for children in order to provide developmental care while their parents are at work, while in Sweden the services are provided to the children with a view to provide the child with the best development learning activities. While the possibility of transfer into education was discussed for many years in Sweden, the rationale for the move when it took place was Sweden’s need as a ‘knowledge society’ for lifelong learning with early childhood services as the first step in that process. The Swedes transfer to education provides an interesting contrast to England, where ‘daycare services’ were transferred to education shortly after, in 1998. The Swedes transferred a system that was already highly developed and fully integrated, and based on a strong pedagogical tradition “for a long time pre-schools in Sweden had been recognised as having a progressive pedagogical approach, emphasising play, children’s natural learning strategies and their overall holistic development” (Korpi, 2005, p. 10). But following transfer, Sweden has built on these foundations by applying educational principles to the system. Entitlement to provision, already available to employed and studying parents, was extended to all Swedes children who now have the right to a place in a pre-school from 12 months of age access is no longer conditional on parental employment or welfare need. A curriculum was introduced for pre-schools, spanning the full pre-school age range, a short framework document similar in orientation to that for compulsory school although, unlike the school curriculum, it makes specific reference to a pedagogical orientation. A free period of provision was introduced for 4 and 5 year olds and a ceiling placed on remaining parental fees, as initial steps towards the educational principle of free attendance. Bracey & Stellar (2003) emphasises on high quality day care as it produces long-term positive outcomes, how can UK expects those outcomes when instead of focusing upon the basic foundation of childcare, it relies upon its policies which are reshaped in accordance with the factors of social exclusion and poverty. Hence, we can see the difference marked by the social care provision in Europe, which swathe similarities, so that it can no longer be seen on a broad spectrum. References & Bibliography Bracey W. Gerald & Stellar Arthur, (2003) Long-Term Studies of Preschool: Lasting Benefits Far Outweigh Costs In: Phi Delta Kappan. Volume: 84: 10. Page Number: 780. Bracken A. Bruce, (2004) The Psychoeducational Assessment of Preschool Children: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ. Broberg G. Anders, Hwang Philip, Lamb E. Michael & Sternberg J. Kathleen, (1992) Child Care in Context: Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, NJ. Fletcher, V. (2003) ‘Parents with children under six can ask for a day off work every week, In: Evening Standard, 18 March 2003 Goldschmied Elinor & Jackson Sonia, (2003) People under Three: Young People in Day Care: Routledge: London, New York. Korpi, B.M. (2005), ‘The foundation for lifelong learning’ In: Children in Europe, 9, pp. 10-11. Lubeck Sally, (2001) Early Childhood in Cross National Perspective - Early Childhood Education and Care in England In: Phi Delta Kappan. Volume: 83: 3. Page Number: 216. Moss Peter, (2006) Farewell to Childcare In: National Institute Economic Review. Issue: 195. Page Number: 70+. Moss, P. and Melhuish, E. (eds) (1991) Current Issues in Day Care for Young Children: Research and policy implications, London: HMSO. Rodd Jillian, (1995) British Child Care and Early Education Services In: Childhood Education. Volume: 72: 1. Page Number: 32 Rossilli Mariagrazia, (2000) Gender Policies in the European Union: Peter Lang: New York. Sweden2006a, Accessed from Sweden2006a1, Accessed from Zaman Ahmed & Rahul M. Amin, (2003) Ethnic Composition of the Clientele and the Managerial Challenges of Private Urban Child Care Centers: Some Strategic Implications In: Education. Volume: 123: 4 Page Number: 798 Read More