ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the acute shortage of day care facilities in Britain led to a situation where publicly funded childcare places were reserved almost entirely for families facing serious difficulties. These were previously identified as ‘priority cases’ and later as families ‘in need’ under the Children Act, 1989, meaning that their children need services from the local authority ‘to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development’ (or were disabled). The Children Act for the first time recognized day care as one of those services, but research by Dillon and Statham found, far from increasing access, the criteria for providing sponsored day care were becoming ever more stringent and very few places were available-reaching fewer than 2 per cent of children under five. With the decline in the number of local authority day nurseries, subsidized places are increasingly limited to part-time attendance for a relatively short period either in private day nurseries or with family day care providers (Statham, 2003).
