  
Infantile Disorders

Recent issues of Here & Now have criticised the way in which managerial 
groups seek and extend their power by presenting their own interests as 
everyone's. This should indicate concerns which differ from all those for 
whom politics is ultimately an administrative programme. 

Rival groups' arguments appeal to a general interest which just happens to 
coincide with their own. Attention paid to this "ventriloquism" can show how 
disputes within managerial sectors escalate and are contained. But there are 
pitfalls in discarding the progressive "solutions" supported by professional 
sectors. A refusal to identify with a specific group makes it possible to 
float off into a general rhetoric which is no longer tethered to any 
specifics. Emphasising the need to reject all "progressive" political groups 
also brings the risk of identifying instead with the apparent negativity of 
various subcultures. 

Living within such constraints can amount to no more than continuation of 
politics by other means. The decks may seem to have been cleared, but the 
same furniture keeps appearing: scathing critiques of conventional politics, 
and commentaries on events and actions falling within the "crisis" category 
which defines the borders of political interest. 

Off-limits lie the associative, mundane, and often non-political, forms 
through which our lives are constructed. This is something much more diffuse 
than the "public sphere" where many try to rebuild socialism. That "public 
sphere" already divides doing from speaking - and hence brings opportunities 
for the intelligentsia's aspirations.

The associative area is, of course, being subjected to stresses similar to 
those faced in informal workplace organisation and the like. The remainder of 
this article considers some pressures faced by one such associative form - 
toddler and play groups. It would be nice to be able to say that no apology 
is offered for this choice, but the preceding four paragraphs do amount to 
some kind of apology.  

Toddler and under-five playgroups have been affected by the 1989 Children 
Act. In many ways, the Act consolidated previous legislation; in other ways 
it responded to the "issues" of the moment (such as in declarations in favour 
of equal opportunities). As a result, its passage was untroubled by 
controversy and gained all-party support. (Other aspects of the Act may be 
discussed in future issues of Here & Now.) 

The Scottish Office guidelines to the Act ("Regulation and Review of 
Childminding, Daycare and Education Services for Children Under Eight: 
Guidance for Local Authorities") place playgroups under the same broad 
category as child-minding and private and employer-organised nurseries. 
although allowing for some differences in staffing ratios, etc. They do 
acknowledge that the "playgroup movement stresses the role of parents as 
prime educators of their children" and that the "playgroup philosophy is 
based on parental involvement in all aspects of management and organisation". 
Nonetheless, the category hides even the basic economic difference between 
playgroups and paid childcare. Paid childcare is based not on association but 
on marginal utility: the squeeze between the monetary or positional rewards 
which a parent gains by working and that passed on to the child-minder. The 
legislation, with its checks, balances and administrative opportunities, 
regards association and marginal utility as commensurate. But if they are 
converging,  this is partly due to the legislation itself.

The Act wears the fashions of its time. It requires registration of anyone 
who supervises children, and police checks on their pasts to detect child 
abusers. All child-care premises must be registered and inspected annually. 
With a straight face, the guidelines intone that this inspection will 
"provide reassurance to parents about the involvement of the local 
authority". When association becomes something permitted by central 
authorities, its limits fall under the notion of exemption: exemption from 
registration when two families have a mutual arrangement or for a conference 
creche used fewer than 6 times in a year. Ample potential here for repressive 
application of norms! And by diluting the associative principle, it permits 
administrative intervention under the notion of needs. Rather than standing 
outside capitalism, a need is already something which can be manipulated in 
terms of resource allocation.  
 
So Section 19 of the Act requires a regular review of services for young 
children. Responsibility for the review is placed on the Social Work and 
Education Departments, but many of the facilities under review are outwith 
their control, and may be based on these different social models. The "two 
departments" need the voluntary sector to underwrite their legitimacy, but do 
associations need the departments? The question becomes acute when they 
organise the recommended "Under-Fives Forum" to seek any "representations 
which they consider relevant". This is described as an "open process" but is 
just a prelude to the concocting of a report by the two departments. They are 
to summarise resource availability, compare this "with known policy 
objectives" and identify "centres of excellence and known mismatches between 
supply and demand". These expressions in bureaucratic language have no known 
translation into dialects of association. After all, what if a particular 
toddler group was identified as a "centre of excellence"? Its success results 
from the relations of the people involved. How could this be ported to other 
situations, even if it was desirable? 

Political attitudes to processes like the Review can range from "take-over" 
to "abstention". A "take-over" to use the institutions proclaimed values 
against it may be presented as more subversive but is based on the general 
abstention in the "black hole of the social". People recognise and avoid a 
purposeless meeting intended to underwrite the bureaucrats' Review process.

Despite abstention, the legislation and its processes may increase the extent 
to which Social Work Departments regard voluntary associations as 
self-administered colonies of their own empires. (Already, it is not unknown 
for groups of Council bureaucrats under such false impressions to carry out 
unannounced and uninvited tours of playgroups.)

But federated toddler and under-five groups are equally able to give 
themselves the managerialist veneer of the times. The keynote speech at a 
recent Scottish Pre-School Play Association conference was delivered by an 
Educationalist who focussed on training and standards, the setting of 
objectives, etc. The subsequent Editorial in the Association's Parent to 
Parent magazine suggests that "his definition of a good manager could just as 
easily be a definition of a 'good' parent". Again, this indicates how a 
separate goal-oriented public sphere amenable to administrative logic can 
emerge from lack of appreciation of the value of association in its own right 
and with its own limitations..

	Alex Richards
From Here & Now 13 1992 - No copyright
