From caregiver to riskmanager: Professionals assessing parents in Danish childcare institutions

This article explores assessments and collaborative practices between Danish parents and professionals when young children enter nursery care. Based on practice research in Danish child care centers, the article focuses on how early childhood education policy is connected to early assessment, based on an understanding of children as vulnerable and in need of stimulation by adults in order to develop properly. Consequently, parents act not only as primary caregivers for their children- but also as risk managers. The article analyses how parents’ acts of care are sometimes interpreted by professionals as an unwillingness to collaborate, thus transforming evaluation of children’s settling in into assessments of parents’ skills. This risks disrupting the child’s ’chain of care’.