2. It is proposed to offer all children with special requirements, arising from physical, mental, social and linguistic handicaps, access to a pre-school from the age of at most 4 years. The need of such children to attend a pre-school should be met as soon as possible. This relates to the potential role of the pre-school in expanded social activities of an outreach type. The necessary condition for this is team-work between preventive social and medical sociological child care and the pre-school.

The Commission, in its pedagogic programme, emphasizes the importance of the pre-school for handicapped children. The Commission has used the term »children with special requirements», to broaden the somewhat narrow concept we often have today of a handicap. Handicapped children are those who are exposed to a greater strain, more difficult conditions, or obstacles in different activities and situations.

Those needing to attend pre-school before the age of 6 often include children from immigrant families. Such children need support as much for their emotional and social development, as for learning Swedish.

For children with special requirements to be meaningfully integrated in the preschool, the Commission considers that roughly the same organizational conditions must be met as apply to the compulsory school, if the pre-school is to function satisfactorily.

These children must be given priority by increased resources even at the pre-school level. The Commission considers the three most important means of creating these resources to be as follows:

Legislated priority guaranteeing these children a place at a pre-school or corresponding facility with total responsibility on the part of the local authority for this and case-finding activities.

A reinforcement of pre-school staff is required for children with special requirements. It is proposed that a standard additional allowance be made for this purpose, on top of the general state operating grant.

The child care centres should follow up all children from birth until, primarily, the commencement of compulsory schooling, in co-operation with the municipal social organizations, i.e. the Child Welfare Committee/Social Services Committee and the pre-school.

Children with special requirements who cannot use their pre-school places should be offered special pre-school activities/play-therapy in the home, and playotheque» activities. Sick children, when they are at a hospital, children's home or corresponding institution, should be offered pre-school activities/play-therapy from the earliest age possible.

Responsibility towards children with special requirements should also be clearly defined. The Commission on Child Centres wishes to establish that the municipal authorities should bear the total responsibility for arranging pre-school activities at a pre-school, or when necessary in some other form, within the municipality. Until a County Council (landsting) has declared its responsibility for a child with special requirements in accordance with the Care Act's provisions for the mentally retarded, or for the child's care at a hospital, nursing home, children's home etc., the responsibility for pre-school activities rests with the municipality. The municipality is required to ensure that the child, through the County Council, has access to pre-school activities corresponding to those available to the child in its own municipality.

The Commission on Child Centres proposes a Pre-school Act that stipulates casefinding activities in respect of all children with special requirements. When fully built out, such activities should provide well-planned and co-ordinated social services to families with children. Both formally and in real terms, these activities should be such that they are experienced as a positive and desired support to parents and their children.

The primary object of case-finding activities is to offer the children visited the services required by each child and its family. Examples include financial assistance, finding accommodation, referral to other bodies etc.

Also, in many situations, early pre-school activities can be an advantage for the child and the family. For instance, a priority place at a pre-school can be necessary in sorting out a malfunctioning social situation. It can relieve the family of a burden, but it can also be a stimulus for the child and parents that will make possible a generally improved home environment.

The responsibility for case-finding activities in respect of children with special requirements lies with the local authority's social bodies. These should also bear the responsibility for the pre-school, and its role in the total services offered as part of family policy. To achieve general, positive case-finding activities, the Commission has proposed experiments with co-operation centering around the pre-school, primarily co-operation between the Child Welfare Committee and child care centre.

The Commission on Child Centres therefore proposes that municipal staff from the Child Welfare Committee/Social Services Committee be attached to the child care centres for integrated socio-medical team-work. An examination at the child care centre in the spring of the year in which children reach the age of 4 is to be extended to cover all 4-year-olds; at the same time, this examination can provide a basis for considering priorities to the pre-school. The purpose of the pre-school examination> is primarily to find children in need of special support and stimulation, and to offer them priority to the pre-school. This proposal should be seen as a first step towards increased co-operation between medical, pedagogical and social bodies.

The Commission further proposes experiments with direct co-operation between

the Child Welfare Committee/Social Services Committee, maternity centres, child care centres, and the Mental Health Service for Children. Such co-operation would reinforce the various bodies concerned, in that they could utilize each others' resources. Different models for such co-operation should be tested, and evaluated.

3. In the long run, the children of gainfully employed or student parents should be offered complete access to full-day pre-school places, according to need. This is something that will depend on the availability of staff, the financial resources available for pre-schools, and ultimately political decisions.

The full-time pre-school meets at present the needs of some 20% of all gainfully employed or student parents. Places are very unevenly distributed over the country. While Stockholm, in 1970, met approximately 50 % of the need, 103 local authority federations provided no places whatsoever. These federations, however, had a relatively small proportion of the country's pre-school children.

The Commission on Child Centres gives very high priority to the expansion of the full-time pre-school, which has the double purpose of making it easier for parents to take gainful employment and helping the children to a rich personality development in respect of both social interplay and intellectual and emotional experience. Partly for this reason, it has been proposed that all local authorities should compile pre-school plans, reporting the entire future need for pre-school places in the area, and their location. It is proposed that these plans should cover periods of 5-10 years, and be of >rolling type.

In the case of new residential areas, the Commission has gone a step further and proposed legal regulations to govern plans, so that the entire need for pre-school facilities (both full-time and part-time places) for the children of gainfully employed or student parents would be met from the very beginning in new residential areas with more than 200 dwelling units. The object of these regulations would be to achieve a more even expansion of full-time places over the country. It is also desired to avoid, in the future, built-in short-comings that will persist for a long period, as has previously happened in many areas. Moreover, requirements for social services are also particularly great in the new residential areas, where the proportion of children often is very high. The pre-school can help to develop a »contact environment» in areas that may otherwise tend to be anonymous.

The Commission points out that the demand for a full coverage of requirements in new residential areas naturally puts a heavy burden on the community's resources — in the short term. In the long term, the building of full-time pre-schools is a force that will liberate resources for the community. With a continued high rate of residential construction, it is reckoned that these regulations on plans could give rise to approximately 10,-20,000 additional full-time pre-school places per year in new residential areas.

It should be observed, however, says the Commission, that the full-time pre-school will answer, even with a full coverage of requirements, for only a fairly modest proportion of the total annual costs of a newly built area.

The Commission further proposes a technical means of steering plans: the local authorities are to reserve land for the expansion of pre-schools in their general and detailed plans. The Commission's draft directives are reported in the form of Pre-school Standards. These give a minimum requirement of 50 sq.m. (about 540 sq.ft.) per place (excluding parking). A figure of approximately 80 sq.m. (about 860 sq.ft.) per place is given as desirable. With the higher figure, the needs of the pre-school will be better met, namely with a view to being able to accept other children and adults from the area within the framework of the pre-school's pedagogic programme.

Arising from its proposal that the child care centres should follow all children from birth until the commencement of compulsory schooling, the Commission further proposes that the pre-school's mental and physical health services be transferred entirely to the local child care centres.

Following a Parliamentary decision in 1972 that a medical notice of birth shall be sent from the maternity department in which a child is born to the child care centre in the mother's district of residence, and a decision that every child shall remain enrolled at the child care centre until school starts, the child care centre already in practice bears the formal responsibility for the health of pre-school children.

The Commission strongly emphasizes the need for psychological consultants to the pre-school and child care centres. Owing to the present short supply of psychologically trained staff, the Commission proposes that the Mental Health Service for Children should be more firmly attached to, primarily, the child care centres. Since the child care centre is responsible for the health of pre-school children, the consultants can meet also the needs of the pre-school. The Commission stresses that they should work mainly via the personnel, supporting the staff of both the pre-school and child care centre. In the long run, it should be possible to detach special psychological consultants to meet the requirements of the pre-school, within the framework of a future family services centre/social centre that serves families, pre-schools, schools and free-time centres within a residential area, with an integrated team answering for social, mental and physical health and counselling.

The pre-school's responsibility for cases of temporary illness at the pre-school The Commission on Child Centres considers also the question of children who are temporarily ill, and the responsibility that should be borne by the pre-school. At present, considerable difficulties often arise for both the child and its parents when

illness occurs. The pre-school cannot then accept the child, and it can be difficult to arrange supervision in the home.

The Commission here proposes that parents should receive a sickness benefit in accordance with the proposals of the Committee on Family Policy (10 days per family per year), proposals that will be considered by Parliament during 1973; also, childminders for the care of children when sick should be permanently attached to specific pre-schools. In the Commission's opinion, the responsibility undertaken by the community for the care of the child, in that a place at a pre-school (or family day nursery or free-time centre) has been offered to a child of gainfully employed or student parents, should cover also cases when the child is temporarily ill and cannot attend pre-school.

Staff requirements and costs for the care of children when sick should be incorporated in calculations on organization and costs for all pre-schools taking children for 5 or more hours per day. The sickness statistics available suggest that absence by reason of occasional illness averages about 25 days per child and year, i.e. a 10-12% absence rate for sickness. It should be possible to calculate the number of childminders needed on this basis.

Pre-school opening hours and parents' working hours how far does the pre-school's responsibility extend?

Shift-work and inconvenient working hours are becoming increasingly common in the public and private service sector, and in industry. The pre-school's hours (6.30 a.m. -7 p.m.) are thus not in line with the parents' working hours. Demands have been voiced for more flexible hours at the pre-schools.

The Commission emphasizes that the employers' and employees' organizations should consider the question of the family's role and the placing of working hours. >It is self-evident that the situation of children and their parents should be a heavily weighing factor in agreements and discussions on working hours and their allocation.» An attempt should be made to give priority to the needs of parents with small children for better working hours. In the long run, this will create better terms for the functioning of families with children.

In the short term, the Commission finds it impossible to offer any categorical solutions. However, attempts should be made to adapt shift systems, for instance, to the needs of parents with young children in another way: regular day shifts, later change-overs on the morning shift, and 6-hour shifts.

The Commission also recommends that the local authorities responsible take a generous attitude towards different hours for pre-schools, in all areas where there is a need for this.