Daycare services in the Municipality of Reggio Calabria. The impact of the crisis on a long-standing deficit

The monograph presents the preliminary findings of a case study developed in the context of the COST Action IS1102 - Social Services, Welfare State and Places. It describes the changes that have occurred in the provision of daycare services for children aged 0-36 months in the Municipality of Reggio Calabria over the last 40 years – i.e. since the establishment of daycare as a public service in the early 1970s with the national Law 1044/1971 and the related regional legislation of 1973. Three aspects are especially addressed: a) the the division of labour between the national, the regional and the municipal government in regulation, funding and programming daycare services; b) changes in daycare coverage; c) the transformations in the supply structure, i.e. the division of labour between the state, the market, the third sector and the family. On the basis of secondary information and original fieldwork, the paper highlights how, despite repeated national investment programmes and an ambitious regional legislative framework, the public provision of daycare services in Reggio Calabria in the period considered has lagged dramatically behind and the municipal government has not managed to reduce a long-standing deficit. The public coverage rate in the largest city of the region remains among the lowest of Italy, whereas the little existing formal services are almost exclusively provided by unregulated private daycare centres and the large majority of daycare remains provided informally, mostly through unpaid family care. The financial crisis, worsened in the case of Reggio Calabria by the recent dissolution of the municipal government and its being placed under compulsory administration, is further jeopardizing any attempt at redressing the deficit. Demand-side and supply-side interpretations are reviewed and a set of explanatory hypotheses are presented, stressing the need to overcome simplistic, one-sided causal perspectives and to mobilize an articulated explanatory framework.