Udsatte børn i dagplejen: en undersøgelse af viden, hverdagsliv og udviklingsmuligheder.

The overall goal of this study is to elucidate whether daycare in private homes as a societal institution can help break negative social heritage. In other words can everyday life, work with measures, learning and curricula at daycare in private homes make a positive difference for vulnerable children and promote their chances in life seen in a learning perspective?

Some difficulties must be overcome in order for daycare in private homes to make a positive difference for vulnerable children. Some childminders tend to look at the child’s ‘problems’ individually and in a compensating way rather than taking a more innovative, resource-enhancing and learning-oriented view in a social perspective. Childminders lack knowledge about vulnerability and would like courses and networks, although many are capable of characterising vulnerable children. More often than childminders, social pedagogues working as childminders say that they have vulnerable children, and they work according to curricula to a higher degree.  Most of them believe that their efforts have an impact now as well as later. Finally, daycare in private homes is viewed as inhibiting as well as promoting, as a small environment with few children can provide tranquillity and room for vulnerable children, but also reduce professionalism and cooperation between childminders.  

The study is a mixed-methods study with both quantitative and qualitative research tools, including ethnographic elements, on the perceptions of childminders and social pedagogues working as childminders on themes about socially vulnerable children.
Questionnaires are filled out by a representative segment of Danish childminders and social pedagogues working as childminders. A selection of childminder respondents later take part in a group interview and then in a structured interview with the researcher in the given private homes used for daycare. Daycare in private homes is observed at the same time and finally a group interview is conducted.

Jensen, B. (2009). Udsatte børn i dagplejen: en undersøgelse af viden, hverdagsliv og udviklingsmuligheder. København: Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsforlag.