The development of social services and de facto day care, too, is influenced by numerous circumstances, the significance of which changes depending on particular historic conditions in individual regions. That these circumstances are mainly of demographic, socio-economic and socio-political character. The main purpose of this dissertation was, therefore, to find a relation between selected aspects of day care (territorial profile, legislative change and profile of an organisation providing day care) and the development of day care (by means of increasing the number of its users; increasing the exploitation of tasks; developing the temporal and territorial availability of the service; through the range of optional services on offer; increasing quality of the services provided, and by improving the system of funding). In order to achieve such goals, I intended to take advantage of the mixed research approach from the very beginning. In order to describe and analyze the degree of independence of variables, quantitative research methods were used, which were applied both with the usage of secondary data analysis, and by the means of survey. In order to have a better understanding of the relation between selected aspects of day care and its development, a qualitative method was chosen since it was presumed that it was on the basis of an interpretation of information provided by "practicing experts" that the wider context of the issue under observation could be grasped. The research makes it clear that mutual relations between selected characteristics of territorial profile and the number of day care users in the Czech Republic is significantly diversified. Despite this diversity, several common features of the territorial profile were identified, and these features have an impact on the development of day care in the country. When asked to evaluate the territorial availability of day care after the passing of Act No. 180/2006 Coll., on Social Services, respondents claimed that no significant changes have occurred. The law has been in force for seven years, but providers of day care services do not notice any greater interest in their services. On the contrary; the scope of tasks performed by the day care personnel is experiencing a decreasing trend. It was proven that particularly religious or regional organisations providing day care services bring greater territorial availability of the service, and, besides that, take care of the expanding temporal availability of their services on a more frequent basis. The providers have confirmed that, as far as providing day care services, Act No. 108/2006 Coll., on Social Services, has brought about mainly qualitative changes which are stipulated by defined rules, control mechanisms and the individualisation of the service. In spite of its indisputable pros, however, the act should be improved, especially when it comes to the current funding of the service and the quality of inspections by the social services.

Large-scale criminal violence (LCV) as a phenomenon has had little academic discussion despite its large effects in the lives of thousands of people around the world, with regions such as Latin America being particularly affected by it. Despite the extensive literature on civil conflicts on one hand, and criminal and gang behavior on the other, there is still an important gap on the causes of violence perpetrated by organized criminal actors.  This thesis contributes to this research gap by asking under what conditions do criminal actors trigger large-scale violence? Through a quantitative cross-country study focused on Latin America, this thesis explores the role that territorial availability plays in the onset of LCV. Empirical findings were not conclusive due to a lack of statistical significance; however, data seems to suggest that higher levels of territorial availability could be associated with an increased likelihood of LCV onset, especially when controlling for factors such as equal resource distribution and when adjusting the sample size to include only state with no active conflicts. Finally, this research points to the imperious need of better data regarding criminal violence, and criminal-related homicides to gain better knowledge of LCV patterns and to build evidence that supports pathways towards reducing it.