Family Day Care Is for Normal Kids: Facilitators and Barriers to the Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Family Day Care (Report‪)‬

Introduction In this paper, we report on a study that examined carers' and coordination staff's perceptions of facilitators and barriers to the inclusion of children with disabilities in family day care (FDC) settings, in 12 FDC schemes in New South Wales (NSW). We begin by defining the term inclusion and providing a review of literature that discusses inclusion in early childhood settings, with a focus on research that has examined inclusion in FDC. Next, because the way FDC is provided, resourced, monitored and supported differs across the world, we describe the way FDC operates in the NSW context and the support that is available for carers and FDC coordination staff through the Inclusion and Professional Support Program (IPSP), an Australian Government-funded program. We then outline the rationale for our study and describe the methods we used before presenting and discussing our findings.