Co-Production and Public Service Management

3Empowering Parents as Co-Producers of Childcare Services in Sweden

A. Introduction

The empirical materials and data presented here stem from the Parent Study of the Swedish Project on Work Environment and Cooperative Social Services (WECSS). Nearly 600 client questionnaires were collected and analyzed in the Parent Study undertaken in the early 1990s, the results of which are reported here. We are primarily interested in exploring the value created for parents through the existence of possibilities for greater participation in some forms of cooperative daycare services as opposed to the lack of such possibilities for participation in municipal daycare facilities. Three types of social enterprises are included in our study: parent cooperatives, ...