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Finland Child-Care Services
A law with far-reaching effects was the 1973 Child Day
Care
Act, which stipulated that all local governments were to
provide
good child day care for all families that desired it. The
care
for children up to seven years of age could be given
either in
day-care centers, sometimes private but generally run by
local
governments, or by accredited baby-sitters, either at the
child's
home or outside it. Although the number of places for day
care
had more than doubled to 100,000 by the mid-1980s, it
would have
had to double again to meet total needs. A 1985 law set
the goal
of being able to allow, by 1990, all parents of children
up to
the age of three the choice between home-care payments or
a place
for their child in a day-care center. One parent could
also take
unpaid employment leave until the child's third birthday.
The
Child Welfare Act of 1983 enjoined local governments to
look
after children, and it empowered them to take a variety of
measures if a child was being seriously neglected or
abused. In
the mid-1980s, about 2 percent of Finnish children were
affected
by this law. Another 1983 law made the corporal punishment
of
children illegal, as it was in the other Nordic countries.
Data as of December 1988
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