Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

For this week's blog I chose to look at the alternative. I was able to read a paper on early childhood care in New Zealand. The paper I read was a UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood. There are many things that I found interesting and gained knowledge on. The first thing that I learned was that New Zealand has no requirements educational wise when it comes to home-based care caregivers. They have laws that govern the environment but not the caregiver. In the 20th century more parent were seek the home-based care because they wanted their children in a home environment. " A key reason for Government support and regulation is that the quality of early childhood services, including home-based services, is linked to long-term educational and social benefits for children and families" ( Podmore, 2002, p.2). This paper looks at why there needs to be regulations on home-based care for children. I found that New Zealand views the early education and care of to be very important for children and their society. The government provides the same amount of funds to home-based care versus center based. The government sees that an infrastructure needs to be present in order to help provide the high quality care for the children. What I gained from this article is that we are not the only society that struggles with not having an infrastructure.


Reference
Podmore V. N. (2002) Home-Based Early Childhood Services: The Case of New Zealand Retrieved on February 19, 2016 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001373/137381e.pdf