Building Belonging, Not Just Buildings: Community Approaches to Connecting Vulnerable Families with ECEC Services

High-quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services have been shown to enhance children’s cognitive and academic skills significantly, and their social and emotional development. In contexts of limited public investment, or when childcare provision is merely subsumed into schooling frameworks and buildings, service quality and outreach can become a challenge. Based on the results of a project in Barcelona, Tampere and Milan, this paper discusses the way community approaches can help expand ECEC services focusing on how these services interact with the neighbourhood. The analysis highlights that achieving universal access should be considered a main priority for quality service, and that it depends not solely on quantitative expansion, but on the extent to which services are intentionally welcoming, culturally responsive, and tailored to the varied needs of all families.