Socialt udsatte børn i dagtilbud – indsats og effekt. Sammenfattende rapport.

This report describes the nature and scope of measures targeted at vulnerable children at daycare centres, and investigates the design and impacts of these measures and methods in practice. The summary report is on three sub-studies, which all have dealt with vulnerable children at various levels, i.e. from the overall, planning municipal level, down to the specific practice in the daycare centres.

The majority of municipalities have formulated a coherent policy on children and young people, and many municipalities focus particularly on measures aimed at socially vulnerable children and young people, primarily defined by the fact that they come from socially vulnerable environments. The municipalities’ child policy prioritises inclusiveness and inclusion of socially vulnerable children in the normal environment. As a consequence of this, there is a movement towards focusing on preventive measures at daycare centres, targeted at the child group as a whole and at parents of vulnerable children. This is based on the understanding that the child’s problems should be seen in a context, rather than on the traditional focus on the individual child and efforts targeted at the individual child. All these initiatives point in the direction of increasing professionalisation of the social pedagogues’ work, a realisation of a different approach and a wish to enhance early action. To a great extent, developments have been driven by state pool funds. Half of Danish municipalities are receiving state pool funds to develop this area. However, parallel to this development, the most common measure is still the traditional special-needs assistant scheme, targeted at the individual child, where resources are still being allocated so that the professionals individualise and emphasise the children’s problems rather than the child’s development opportunities and resources. So in practice measures targeted at the individual child in order to alleviate their problem behaviour or to compensate for lack of development still have the
highest political priority (70% of municipalities).

The study uses mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative data collection). Data collection builds on interviews, questionnaire surveys, desk research about documents and policies, observations as well as literature analyses.

Mehlbye, J. et al. (2009). Socialt udsatte børn i dagtilbud – indsats og effekt. Sammenfattende rapport. København: Indenrigs- og Socialministeriet, Anvendt KommunalForskning.

Mehlbye, J., & Jensen, B. (2009). Indsatsen over for socialt udsatte børn i dagtilbud: Teori og praksis i landets kom-muner. København: AKF, Anvendt KommunalForskning.

Nielsen, H., & Thorgaard, T. (2009). Indsatsen over for socialt udsatte børn i dagtilbud: Casestudier i ti kommuner - delrapport 2. København: AKF.