Brought to Mind

The Report of the State Services Commission Working Party on Early Childhood Care and Administration was published in March 1981. It makes little mention of family day care. This omission is in spite of the evidence available. Firstly there is the existence of organisations to help 'backyard minders' such as city council schemes and Barnardos; secondly there are the facts buried in reports . There have been three reports by the Society for Research on Women which mention the subject in some detail: Urban Women (Wellington, 1972), Child Care in a Wellington Suburb (Wellington, 1975) and Childcare in a Waikato Town (Waikato Branch, published in Wellington, 1979); there were unpublished studies by Phyllis Levitt in Dunedin and Doris Kerrisk in Christchurch (these were based on following up advertisements spotted in newspapers, advertisements saying that home minding was available); thirdly there was my own research as J.R. McKenzie Fellow at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research in 1975 to 1976. I investigated informal family day-care in Porirua, Khandallah, Feilding and the inner-city area of Wellington, interviewing both minders and parents.