Chapter 3: Childcare, Responses to Poverty in Preschool and a ‘New Normal’ After COVID-19 Pandemic?

This chapter discusses research exploring preschool practitioners' beliefs about child poverty and their responses to it before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, in 2014, the authors’ research found notable levels of poverty insensitivity amongst preschool practitioners within prescribed formal pedagogical contexts emphasising early education over care. With COVID-19 pandemic, some commentators speculated care's place in public consciousness would be raised allowing it to go viral across society. Exploring this, the authors replicated the earlier study in 2021. Drawing upon these recent data from England, the authors consider preschool practitioners' views about the extent to which COVID-19 posed challenges for children in poverty and how much they agreed poverty was something they needed to be sensitive to during the pandemic. The authors then examine preschool practitioners' pedagogical adaptions and their prioritising of care alongside early education during the pandemic. The chapter ends by questioning conjecture about a ‘new normal’ emerging in preschool, allowing pedagogical space for an energised focus upon care.