Commentary: Do Changes in Public Service Delivery Come in Suitcases?

• Author: Nils Petersen
• Date: 01 September 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12103
• Published date: 01 September 2013

Commentary

Nils Petersen is city department director

at the Department for Children and Young

People, City of Aarhus, Denmark.

E-mail: nipe@aarhus.dk

714 Public Administration Review • September | October 2013

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 714–715. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12103.

Nils Petersen

City of Aarhus, Denmark

For a department director at city hall, it can seem

quite surprising that changes in public service

delivery can come in suitcases. However, this

is exactly what has happened in Aarhus, Denmark,

where a research project on public language support in

preschools has led to important changes.

 e Department for Children and Young People in

the city of Aarhus puts a lot of emphasis on giving

all children equal possibilities in life. A dif‌f erenti-

ated public language support program for immigrant

children in the public preschools is an important key

to equal opportunity.

Children whose second language is Danish do not

have the same linguistic starting point as children

for whom Danish is the f‌i rst language when enter-

ing school at the age of six. Inadequate prof‌i ciency

in Danish hinders learning for many impoverished

immigrant children in Aarhus, thereby placing

them at serious risk for substandard future academic

achievement.

 is raises a very important question concerning

public administration and public service: are there

some public service delivery systems that could ensure

better second-language development for children and

a positive coproduction ef‌f ect when the consumer

producers (here, immigrant parents) have low socio-

economic status (SES) and little or no knowledge of

the second language?

 e coproduction experiment conducted by Morten

Jakobsen and Simon Calmar Andersen, described

in “Coproduction and Equity in Public Service

Delivery,” gives a positive answer to this question. And

the answer comes in the form of suitcases.

Jakobsen and Andersen show that supplying immi-

grant parents with a suitcase containing children’s

books, games, and a tutorial DVD about language

development techniques has a remarkably posi-

tive ef‌f ect on language prof‌i ciency for immigrant

preschool children with the lowest SES background.

 e suitcase intervention reduces the proportion of

children requiring special language support classes

when starting school.

From a municipal point of view, Jakobsen and

Andersen’s results are economically, linguistically, and

socially of great interest.

•  e results show that more ef‌f ective public

language support in preschool is in fact possible

through targeted and economically manageable

coproduction programs.

•  e results also show that all parents can and will

support their children’s language development if

given adequate tools.

• Finally, Jakobsen and Andersen’s study underlines

that social educators at public preschools play a

crucial role in ensuring the knowledge needed

in order for parents to create a positive language

environment at home.

Based on the Jakobsen and Andersen results, impor-

tant changes in the public language support program

for preschool children in the city of Aarhus have been

implemented.

In order to ensure high second-language prof‌i ciency

and an optimal language environment in the home at

the earliest age possible, the original suitcase interven-

tion (f‌i ve to six years of age) has been further devel-

oped and adapted to immigrant parents with children

up to three years old. Over the next f‌i ve years, more

than 1,000 of these suitcases are expected to be pro-

vided to immigrant families.

 ese new suitcases will be handed over to the

parents by health visitors or language consultants in

the homes, and guidance on the practical use of the

content in relation to language development is given

in the home. In this way, public language support has

taken on a new physical platform, moving from the

public preschool to the private homes of the children.

Do Changes in Public Service Delivery Come in Suitcases?