earticle

영어

Purpose: To assess childcare problems that guardians of infants and toddlers face, by analyzing transcripts from telephone child care counseling services. Methods: Contents of 3,535 telephone childcare counseling sessions, within an 18-month period between July 1, 2007 and December 30, 2008 by a child care counseling specialist nurse, were analyzed using SPSS(v19.0) with frequency, mean, standard deviation and Chi-square test. Results: The participants were mainly stay-at-home guardians with their first child aged <1 year. The most common reason for the call was feeding and nutrition, followed by abnormal symptoms, common childcare knowledge, excretion, worrisome behavior, growth and development, sleep, and vaccination. The reasons significantly differed depending on the age of the child. For 1–4-year-old children were feeding and nutrition, abnormal symptoms, and worrisome behavior. whereas those for >4-year-old children, worrisome behavior was the most common reason, and the number of calls and repeat counseling rate showed an increasing trend with every quarter. Conclusions: Telephone childcare counseling services are easy and effective for helping guardians of infants and toddlers, who face childcare problems. Therefore, legal and regulatory supports for national programs are necessary to train and hire specialists to establish these services.