Pressures towards and within universalism: Conceptualising change in care policy and discourse’

Within Europe, care policies for children and older people have been, over the last two decades, one of the most dynamic policy areas of welfare state development. Both long-term care (LTC) and early childhood education and care (ECEC) respond to changing needs and demands for care. Ageing populations, labour market participation of women, decline in fertility and changes in family dynamics put pressure on national care systems. Although all countries that are analysed in depth in Part II (Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain) experience these changes in needs and demands, albeit with different degrees, their responses vary depending on a number of factors ranging from their institutional history of welfare evolution, industrial relations and migratory regime to political discourses and social norms and values. This chapter will look at discourses and policy agenda setting, framing developments in care for the two extremes of the life cycle, children and older people, at both supranational and national levels and since the 1990s until today.