The Marginalization of Child Care: A Pilot Atlas of Child Care in Ottawa

Coming from an ‘ethic of care’ perspective, this study utilizes a critical feminist approach to examine the use of participatory mapping technologies as potential tools for social policy analysis. The purpose of this research is to address whether advances in online mapping technologies can assist governments and communities with generating more experiential evidence-based policy-making. Focusing on government child care programs and policies in the Ottawa area, a cybercartographic atlas was created using information from focus groups with parents and a review of current child care programs and policies. This Pilot Child Care Atlas was successfully able to incorporate all of the child care programs and policies researched while also allowing for the imputing of the experiences of parents from the focus groups. However, in order to fully assess the usefulness of this technology for social policy analysis further research is necessary where the atlas is made available to the community.