RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH IN CHILDCARE POLICIES FOR CHILDREN UNDER 3 - A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE FOR POLAND, GERMANY AND ITALY

The article makes a comparative analysis of early childhood services and education from the perspective of children under the age of 3. The goal of the article is to answer the question of how different institutional conditions affect children’s right to attend childcare facilities and the effective realization of this right.Unlike most of the existing literature, which has analyzed child care policy from the perspective of the family or women, the article focuses on comparing different solutions and policy approaches in this area addressing their accessibility, adequacy and high quality using a rights-based approach. In particular, it analyzes how existing normative, instrumental and enforcement resources are linked to the availability and use of child care institutions for children under 3 years of age, using the example of three countries with different levels of use, namely Poland, Germany and Italy.The fastest growth in children’s participation in various forms of care, up to levels close to the Barcelona targets, is seen in Germany, where there is a right (normative resource) to child care, as well as a range of instrumental resources - whether outlays for care, subsidies for care for low-income families, or broad access to information about existing care places.