저소득 가구 보육서비스 사업 효과 연구

Abstract

The Korea Foundation for Women, under the auspices of the Life Insurance Social Contribution Committee, decided to implement a project to dispatch in-home childcare providers for low-income families as an alternative to childcare by institutions. In the context of this initiative, study aims to understand the current status of the project implementation and to develop a series of evaluation indices, in order to evaluate the performance of the project based on actual data and to seek future directions for the project.

The study concerns a review of the project to provide in-home childcare services for low-income families, the development of evaluation areas and indices, the collection of basic data through the evaluation indices, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the project, an examination of individual cases to supplement the survey results and to substantiate the evaluation of the effectiveness, and drawing forth of the implications of in-home childcare service for the future development of a relevant support policy.

To this end, the study examined the existing research literature and data, and conducted surveys of in-home childcare providers and parents and in-depth interviews regarding individual cases.

The study observed that the project benefited infants and elementary school children in many ways. For example, firstly, the project helped such children in developing lifestyle habits such as: having an enhanced sense of hygiene concerning their overall body, teeth, clothes and bowel habits; keeping things in order; self-control when it comes to watching TV; fulfilling promises made; and doing homework and self-preparation of learning materials. Secondly, the project also helped them in their emotional health and socialization: they have become more mentally stable, more sociable, more responsive, more self-expressive and more comfortable with eye contact and physical contact, and less aggressive both verbally and physically. Thirdly, infants, young children and elementary school children alike showed improvement in their physical health, including their resistance to disease, dietary habits, development and nutrition. Lastly, the project proved to be beneficial for the overall academic performance and school life of elementary school children.

For their part, primary fosterers, too, reported that the project was effective in their employment and household economy, and answered that they became more confident of their child-rearing methods, more responsive to their children’s behavioral/emotional changes, better at dealing with their anger and conflicts, became more adept at persuading them verbally, praising them and encouraging consistency in their attitudes. Besides these changes, they reported that the project contributed to improving their relationships with children and other family members and caused beneficial emotional changes in their children.

In-home childcare providers were found to see the average working hours per day increase by about two hours from 5.0 hours to 7.1 hours. In addition, 90 percent of them answered that they found their work rewarding, took pride in their work as professionals and enjoyed their work, while 81 percent of them responded that they have felt more joy and happiness since they worked as an in-home childcare provider. Sixty-nine percent of the respondents stated that they saw improvements in their relationships with their family and relatives.