The main objectives of the study have been to investigate the welfare policy in South Africa as it relates to childcare, compile the profile of trans-racial families, to examine the socialisation processes within trans-racial families. To compile a profile of people who give away their children for adoption or foster care, identify the needs and challenges confronting trans - racial families, as well as establish the support networks available to trans-racial families. The study has therefore established that the childcare policy of the Department of Welfare is based on the concept of permanency planning. The premise is that a child's most important bonds are those made with his parents and that they should take care of him or her. Preventive services aimed at preserving the family unit must be emphasised. The family is the institution in which the basic moral and social being of the individual personality is formed. It is here that the child learns that he is dependent on the co-operation of others for the satisfaction of his own needs and for the realisation of his own goals. However, when the social and living conditions in a family are poor, other alternatives have to be considered. In South Africa, like in other countries the first alternative is to place the children in care. There are various places of care. In South Africa, children in need of care can either be placed for adoption in a residential care or in a foster home. Adoption is a permanent arrangement, whereby a married or single parent places a child in their care permanently. There is a legal binding. Alternatively a child can be placed with a family of a different race. This is another way of providing a child or an infant of a different race or/and culture with new legal parents. The study has also established that all adoptive parents who participated in this particular study were white, mostly females. The majority of the parents were married. Most of them have also acquired tertiary education. Most of them were also employed, and they live in racially integrated communities. Of all the twenty families that were interviewed twelve of them had no children of their own. Most of the families reported to be Christians. There were thirty-five children amongst the families that participated in the study. There were eighteen females and seventeen males Nineteen children were African, twelve were coloured, three were Indian and only one child was half-Indian and half coloured. Most families reported that their children were outgoing, but shy. Most of the children attend integrated schools, and there are other adopted children at the school. Most of the children are comfortable with blacks and whites. Six of the parents who gave away their children for adoption and foster care were in their late twenties. Whereas three were still teenagers. One was in her early twenties, five were in their mid twenties and only two were in their early thirties. Seven of the birth parents were blacks, another seven coloureds, two Indians and only one was white. The main reason for giving their children away for adoption and foster care was due to financial constraints. Support networks are very essential for adoptive families to function properly and this give them an opportunity to share their burdens with other parents. Many adoptive parents who participated in this study belong to the Rainbow Support Group in Johannesburg, and most adoptive families also rely on the support of their families and friends. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2002.

The home as a site for childcare is linked to notions of 'good' parenting, and the employment of a nanny is often meant to create an extended family which enables a child to be nurtured in this private space. Qualitative interviews undertaken with fifty-one families and eleven nannies indicate that this childcare arrangement is complex and involves shifting and divergent constructions of what good parenting and good childcare are. This childcare arrangement often failed because of the complexities of the employer-employee relationship, and a failed attempt at familial attachment. A partial explanation as to why this fails is that some nannies view their employment as a 'bad' parenting strategy, and suggest that it is the parents who should be nurturing the children. This tension around the appropriateness of certain childcare strategies is indicative of discourses of proper parenting and maternal ideals, and is intimately connected to place. Expanding on this theme, interviews were undertaken with ten daycares in the city of Vancouver to examine how discourses of proper parenting are reworked in a 'public' space. This inquiry introduces more directly issues of class, opportunity and the socialization of children. The maternal ideals expressed in the first part of the study are reworked, and sometimes abandoned, in the delivery of public childcare services. Further, there is a process of normalization that takes place in the designation and segregation of children based on age, and whether they are 'typical' or 'special needs'. I argue that greater attention to emotion is needed in the study of childcare, and greater appreciation of difference is needed in the delivery of childcare. This thesis also questions its original premise, that of looking at childcare as public and private options, and of seeing childcare as an employment strategy.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine whether and how Canadian occupational therapists contribute to child care inclusion. Over 200 Canadian paediatric occupational therapists completed a web based survey identifying the nature of their practice related to inclusion. Findings confirmed that Canadian occupational therapists do support child care inclusion, and that some characteristics of their practice and clients influence the degree of inclusive practice. Results also suggested that occupational therapists could improve their support for child care inclusion by increasing their focus on institutional environments, increasing referrals to child care programs, and increasing the amount of time spent in child care environments. Further study is required to provide a more in-depth understanding of occupational therapy and child care inclusion; this might be best accomplished through qualitative study of practices of occupational therapists identified to be most inclusive in this study.

digitalisering@umu

A multi-method qualitative study of a child care facility was conducted to examine (1) body image, (2) eating attitudes and behaviours, and (3) physical activity among Canadian school age children. The purpose was to recognize and understand the behaviours and social interactions of children related to these concepts at a before- and after-school child care program for children in Grades K-6. How these behaviours and interactions influenced and could be influenced by child care practice was also studied. Observations of six- to 12-year-old children were made over a four-month period to examine interrelationships among the three concepts. These observations were in conjunction with selected interviews with children, informal conversations with child care staff, and with child learning activities conducted by the researcher. Guided by ecological systems theory, the data were examined using content analysis and general inductive analysis. Four main themes emerged from the data: (1) “How to be a better, healthier person,” (2) “Out of their hands,” (3) “Puppets cutting their strings,” and (4) “Reaching out.” Findings showed that children were knowledgeable about ideas and behaviours that influenced health, which was due in part to formal and informal teaching about health at the Centre. The children also exhibited, or were learning to exhibit, healthy behaviours, which were congruent with the child care program’s philosophy, goals, and children’s rights and responsibilities. These healthy behaviours included a positive sense of self, healthy eating habits and food choices, and regular physical activity. Some children’s behaviours also reflected the influences of sociocultural forces, specifically related to physical appearance and activity. This research showed that early learning and child care practice can shape children’s ideas and behaviour about body image, eating and activity. Implications for the establishment and delivery of child care programs, as well as the training and regulation of professional child care staff, are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of adult after-school supervision and the number of parents living at home on health-related fitness levels. Participants for the study were approximately 250 boys and girls in grades three, four and five from Selma Elementary School. The AAHPERD Physical Best Test (1988) was used to assess health-related fitness. This test measured the following components: a) flexibility (sit-and-reach test), b) cardiovascular endurance (timed run/walk test), c) body composition (sum of triceps and calf skinfolds) and d) muscular strength/endurance (timed sit-ups). A questionnaire and consent form were sent home to the parents of all participants. The questionnaire asked the child's name, grade, gender, number of parents/guardians living at home, and who supervises the child after-school. Each third-, fourth- and fifth-grade class completed two days of testing during physical education class time. The mile run/walk was administered on the first day. The second day consisted of three stations: 1) sit-and-reach, 2) skinfold assessment and 3) timed sit-ups. A 2 X 2 MANOVA was used to analyze the data. There was no significant difference between children with after-school supervision and those without after-school supervision. There was also no significant difference between children from one-parent families and children from two-parent families. However, there was a significant interaction between the number of parents and whether or not there was supervision [F(4, 109)= 4.23, p= .003]. An examination of the accompanying univariate Ftests showed that this interaction was mainly due to the difference on the variable sit-ups [F(1, 1 12)= 4.94, p= .028]. A post-hoc simple effects analysis of variance for one-parent families showed that the mean value for sit-ups for children without after-school supervision (x= 39.75) [F= 1, 112)= 5.27, p= .024] was significantly greater than the mean value for situps for children with after-school supervision(x= 34.33). The analysis also showed for two-parent families that there was no difference in the mean number of sit-ups between children with supervision (x= 35.94) [F(1, 112)= .36, p=.549] and those without supervision (x= 34.94). / Institute for Wellness

Today, advocates argue that a universal child care system is necessary for mothers to be able to take part equally in the wage-earning that is the hallmark of citizenship. Why has such a system never been a serious political possibility in twentieth-century British Columbia? In seeking to answer this question, this study looks to important moments in the province’s history of child care politics and, in doing so, untangles the historical understandings of work, motherhood, and social citizenship that have precluded the existence of universal child care in British Columbia’s welfare state. Throughout the twentieth century, British Columbia’s child care politics hinged on debates about whether mothers should work, what kinds of mothers should work, what kinds of work they should do, and what the state’s role was in regulating their relationship to their family and the labour force. As these debates played out across the century, several themes were relatively consistent. The belief that women’s social rights derived from their mothering work was one, and this notion achieved political expression in the passage of mothers’ pensions legislation in 1920. At several moments during the twentieth century, and gaining prominence especially in the 1970s, advocates and activists argued that all women should have the right to work, and that a universal child care system was their right as wage-earning citizens. In terms of policy-making and program provision, however, the story of child care politics in British Columbia is largely one of failure for working mothers. In their relationship to the state, working mothers had two main options, both of which left them limited access to a version of social citizenship constrained by gender and class. On the one hand, gender and class norms translated into welfare policies that encouraged stay-at-home motherhood and precluded the possibility of publicly-provided child care. On the other hand, when a mother was in the labour force, her paid work was assumed to signal some kind of family failure, with “failure” measured against the ideal of a male-breadwinner, female-homemaker family. In those cases, public child care (and to some extent mothers’ pensions) was considered an appropriate welfare service for “needy families” because mothers’ wage work fulfilled important welfare goals: the preservation of the work ethic, guarding against chronic dependency, and meeting the demand for female labourers in marginal occupations. Yet even though mothers’ work was an obligation of their welfare benefits, they were still considered second-class workers and their wage-earning was not a positive source of social rights. Gendered and classed understandings of paid work, in other words, was the source of an uneasy relationship between working mothers and the state. Neither dominant welfare paradigm included room for a child care system that recognized mothers’ rights as paid workers. The result was an unrealized version of social citizenship for working mothers and for all women in twentieth-century British Columbia. / Graduate

Thesis (MHlthSc(OccTh))--University of South Australia, 1999

This research reports on an observation study conducted in Adelaide, South Australia of how 12 educators working in six long day care centres spent their day when working in their care. Specifically the study sought to answer the following research questions: 1. How do educators spend their day in a long day care setting?-- 2. What is the quality of the interactions that occur between educators and children?-- 3. In what ways, if any, does an educator's qualifications and experience impact on the quality and frequency of interactions?

This thesis addresses the issue of environmental influences on the manifestation of unwanted child behaviours (UCBs) in early childhood services. Specifically it examines the evidence for UCBs that result from the interface of physical, social, structural, and cultural components of the environment of a child care centre with the psychological habitats of individual children over the full day of their attendances. The identified unwanted behaviours are used as starting points to analyse children’s behaviour streams for indication of environmental influences in the production of UCBs and to establish common patterns of influence across different children. To facilitate a systematic investigation of the complex child:environment relationships in a child care centre, a conceptual framework was developed to describe time-space locations of settings and situations, the basic components of environmental influence, the child’s psychological habitat, UCBs, and the contextualisation of child behaviours in situ. The framework was utilised to review literature associated with components of both the child’s psychological habitat and the environment of a child care centre, implement an appropriate data collection strategy, as well as guiding data analysis and interpretation of findings. The qualitative approach to data collection involved full-day observations of individual children and recording on audio-tape a continuous concurrent narrative of their actions within a variety of settings and situations. Observations of 30 different children over 54 days yielded almost 400 hours of recordings, which were transcribed onto more than 1000 typed pages. Examination of the transcripts provided evidence of 1384 manifestations of UCBs embedded in 1028 distinct sequences of unwanted behaviours within behaviour streams. Analysis of the behaviour streams and interpretation of antecedent events implicated a variety of interrelated physical, social, structural, and cultural factors in the production of UCBs, which are considered in light of findings from previous studies. Overall, no single factor was found to influence the behaviours of all children, or the same child across different settings and situations. The findings serve to reinforce the known complexity of person:environment relationships, which is further intensified in children between the ages of 3-5 years by their developing socio-emotional and cognitive systems, innate and learned within-child characteristics, and different experiences of centre-based child care. The findings also reinforce the need for practitioners and researchers to consider more fully the individuality of each child when planning programs and investigations into the impact of child care on children. Implications of the findings for practitioners are stated and recommendations are made for future research. / PhD Doctorate