QUALITY OF CARE IN HISTORICAL-PERSPECTIVE

The study of quality of care in two mid-nineteenth-century day nurseri es in North America indicates that quality was associated with saving children's lives within a context of charity-based social welfare. The concern for the health and safety of children led to the entrenchment of a custodial mode of child care. Child care staff developed ''copin g strategies'' that served to modify the quality of care in the instit utions. The resilience of the custodial mode in day nurseries througho ut the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is discussed.