Family and Child Welfare

Family and Child Welfare 3 (3+0)

Lesson 31 : Child Care and Development - Day Care Service

Introduction

Day care is a child welfare service employed when family care for the child must be supplemented for some part of the day. It is designed to permit the child to be maintained in his own home. It also operates to strengthen and support positive parental role enactment. Day care is primarily concerned with helping the temporarily motherless family-motherless because the mother is working. There are various types of day-care and these go under different names. They are nursery school, pre-basic schools, Balwadi, Balmandir, creche, kindergarten, extended school programmes, etc. The purpose of all these programmes is to provide day-care to the children of the working mothers but in India the emphasis has been on the educational aspect, rather than on the care aspect. With more and more employment opportunities for women in this country, there is a need to have more day-care centers.

Day care as a child welfare service designed to supplement daily care, health supervision and developmental experience needed for optimum development. Any form of day care should be designed as a developmental service than fosters the child’s potentialities for physical, emotional, intellectual and social development.