Policies and Practices that Create Multicultural Contexts in Child Care

This paper reports on a research study that examined service providers perspectives of multicultural child care and sought to develop a model that could be used to increase the participation of families from non-English speaking backgrounds in children's services. Only 5.92 per cent of children in child care in South Australia in 1996 were from non-English speaking backgrounds, and questions have been raised about the cultural and linguistic appropriateness of the service. This study sought to identify some policies and practices that create multicultural contexts in child care. Reported here are service providers’ opinions about how to make child care services more inclusive of the additional needs of children from non-English speaking backgrounds. Service providers recommended strategies based on categories of funding, policies, staff, environment, multicultural programs, staff interactions, nutrition, health and safety matters, and supportive relationships between services and communities. Finally the paper addresses implications of the study for multicultural child care practice.