육아종합지원센터 이용 실태 및 운영 내실화 방안 연구

Abstract

Child care support has mainly been focused on institutions and home parenting whilst other kinds of child care have been overlooked. Government, thus, has presented its plan for reinforcing and expanding the infrastructure of Support Center for Childcare to provide integrated child care support since 2013. However, Support Center for Childcare’s service was less likely to be accessible and showed a degree of difference between inter-agencies in its organization’s management and business operational aspects. This study, therefore, focuses on the role of Support Center for Childcare: its use of service, the status of business operation and the plan for substantiality. The study explored the following: the review of international cases, the current status of Support Centers for Childcare, difficulties of managing the centers and the need of improvement in response to parents and staff members’ opinions. Findings from Japanese and German show that the community network and child care counseling were designed to provide one-stop services for parents and the projects were linked to goals of the central government. According to the survey, Support Centers for Childcare provided relatively high percentage of home parenting, child care consultation and a toy rental service. Managers of Support Centers for Childcare mentioned that the main difficulties were staffing, the need and requirement of enhancing the geographical accessibility and the capacity of child care training and consultation. Parents who used the service were less satisfied with child development and parenting information. On the other hand, part-time child care and rental services for toys and books brought higher satisfaction. The need for various services was high. According to nursery staff, training for standard child care curriculum and support for supply practitioners created the highest degree of their satisfaction. They required effective management of supply practitioners, reinforcement of training contents and counselling of staff. Based on the survey, the study suggests the following of the centers’ operational measures and substantiality. The operational measures built one-stop services, provided comprehensive support for children and parents. They also strengthened the central government integration providing various services and specialization of the range of programs. Detailed operational measures included: providing parent communication rooms, mandation of having professional counselors, the service targeting parents with children from 3 months of age, expanding working hours till 9pm twice a week and weekends. The substantiality of the centers including the selection of preferred installation areas, the expansion of branches, the differentiation of the role between centers, sharing the role of supporting nurseries and home parenting and subsiding support for nurseries and home parenting were also suggested.