Care as multi-scalar policy: ECEC and LTC services across Europe

The chapter focuses (from a European perspective) on the territorial architecture and implications of two main specific fields of care policies: early childhood education and care (ECEC) and long-term care (LTC). It shows how, in each of these fields, care policies include the combination of several policy tools that are regulated and implemented through complex multi-scalar structures. Such structures vary strongly across countries, but also show a certain degree of coherence, which cuts across the two policy fields observed by virtue of the basic features of the care regimes. The localization of care policies may have contributed to widespread territorial coverage of such policies, and also to a development of non-standardized policy responses, able to consider local specificities in terms of the type and intensity of care needs. That being said, criticalities also emerge, like risks of territorial inequalities in the provision of care services and stronger and more diffused inter-scalar tensions within a context of permanent austerity.