The Professionalization of Children’s Services in Australia

Abstract

This article examines the concept and practice of the ‘professionalization’ of children’s services in Australia, emphasizing the importance of gender, skills and regulation. Children’s services practitioners have difficulty in reaching professional status – broadly defined. Tertiary-level training and credentials alone are insufficient as the expertise of the work in centre-based services is not ‘socially sanctioned’. The coexistence of family day care diminishes the status of centre-based workers. To achieve professional status a clear delineation between less formal child care arrangements and domestic parenting is required. This process demands the use of new titles for employees, their workplace and their tasks. In addition, practitioner labour must have scarcity value by excluding the untrained and unqualified from centre-based employment.