Erityisesti päivähoidossa : kunnallisten toimijoiden ja päättäjien näkemykset erityispäivähoidon funktiosta palvelujärjestelmässä

The study is a qualitative materials-based study on the early special education that forms part of municipal daycare, i.e. special daycare. Special daycare is a loosely defined function whose form, content and provision differ from one local authority to the next. The study highlights the conceptions of the role of special daycare in the service system and how these conceptions guide the work of actors, decision-makers and care workers in the daycare sector. The special daycare provision process takes into account a child's need for special support, about which parents, the personnel of the daycare centre and the local authority decision-makers each have their own opinion. Their opinions on whether or not support is needed are tempered by the availability of services and local authority resources. Support provided as special daycare may be very different from the support envisaged in the original assessment of the child. The material for the study was collected through two-stage interviews from 31 actors, decision-makers and care workers in the daycare sector in medium-sized municipalities with populations of about 10,000. The interview material was analysed on a resource basis. Documentary materials were retrieved from public administration archives, focusing on the various stages of daycare: decisions, memoranda, circulars and archive materials of the individual local authorities. Four approaches to special daycare were identified: child-oriented, family-oriented, organization-oriented and community-oriented. Further, three functions were identified: 1. Maintenance of classification, which involved the importance of defining a child's need for special support. This classification was even considered the primary objective of the function in some cases. For parents to have had their child examined and diagnosed was considered a successful outcome even if there were no rehabilitative services available. 2. Medicalization, which was the most obvious in attempts to solve social and psychosocial problems through medical means. Here, the daycare organization itself does not expand towards rehabilitation but instead provides a supporting function for medical rehabilitation. 3. Maintenance of institutional social policy. A multitude of administrative problems results from the daycare system officially operating as the provider of a State-guaranteed welfare service but in practice providing discretionary services under the residual social policy model. Officially, the special needs of a child as determined by an expert are satisfied, but in practice it is the personnel and decision-makers who assess, at their discretion, the service needs of the child and the family, The results show that attention should be focused on how the awareness of local authority actors and decision-makers of the special pedagogical basis for this function could be increased. Planning, inter-disciplinary cooperation and the definition of the content of special daycare should be enhanced so that the various actors become conscious of the mutual expectations and assumptions involved. The dismantling of the administrative process of circulating statements would require the assessment of the child and the family performed by the daycare service to be transparent.