Resources for whom? Conceptualizing and comparing childcare policy design for parents of children with complex care needs

Affordable, good quality childcare creates opportunities for many parents to better reconcile work and care or reduces family care to enable other valuable contributions to society. However, childcare studies often overlook parents of children with complex care needs. The often too limited understanding of the availability of affordable, good quality childcare for parents of children with complex care needs is problematic. These parents spend a greater amount of time on caregiving, providing care that goes beyond that of parents of typically developing children. As such, their opportunities beyond caregiving can be limited, and resources, like childcare services, are crucial in supporting the reconciliation of care with other valued activities in life. This article contributes to the cross-national childcare policy literature by conceptualizing comparative indicators to assess the availability, accessibility, and affordability of childcare policy design for children with complex care needs. It then applies these indicators to a comparison of childcare policy design in the UK and the Netherlands, providing an operationalization for further empirical analysis. Broadening childcare policy analysis to include the availability, accessibility, and affordability of childcare for parents of children with complex care needs improves our understanding of child-related care services in cross-national perspective and provides conceptual innovation for improving comparative childcare indicators.