Browsing by Subject "kunnallinen päiväkoti"

The focus of this study is in private sector kindergartens early childhood special education in Helsinki; used procedures and current challenges from the point of view of special education. It has been studied how the supportive mechanisms and services of children with special needs have been organized in private kindergartens and what kind of choices these kindergartens make when selecting children or when special needs emerge and how the support is carried out. Additionally, It has been studied how the co-operation of public and private kindergartens work and how equal children are depending on whether they are customers of publicly or privately run services. The study also introduces methods how early childhood education in private kindergartens could be economically and functionally available possibility for all families, regardless of increased demand of special support. The study deals with a hot topic. The law about early childhood education is old (1973) and it is finally in process of being modernized. The discussion around its contents has been vivid in both academic publications and media. At the moment private kindergartens are responsible in about 8% of the national budget for early childhood education (2.6 billion €). The percentage is growing. Main material for the study consist of five interviews of professionals working in private kindergartens in Helsinki. The used method is closest to a half-structured interview, in which all interviewees were asked the same questions in flexible order. The narrative theme interviews were recorder. One person was interviewed at a time, except in one case where there were two people answering questions. Central findings of the study were that, as expected, there were hardly any children with special needs in privately run kindergartens. Amongst the applicants there had been children with special needs, but the families had been informed about the limited support possibilities and advised to turn to public early childhood services. The early childhood special education tool kit is vastly more inclusive in public than in private sector. One solution could be to increase the amount of local special education teachers that would working solely on private sector. This would make sure that children would have more equal possibilities to use their local kindergartens, despite the fact that those may be private, and be entitled to first class early childhood education Рregardless of their special needs.