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<p>Childcare facilities are a vital social infrastructure that supports children’s development and enables parents to balance work and family life. Ensuring children’s safety in these settings is therefore a fundamental social responsibility. Research on safety in childcare settings has accumulated, but it has largely developed around separate themes such as injury, incident prevention, and maltreatment. As a result, fatal incidents in childcare facilities have rarely been examined as temporal processes across multiple cases. Therefore, this study aimed to examine how institutional, organizational, and practical conditions were involved in the course of fatal incidents in licensed childcare facilities in Japan and to provide a theoretical understanding of the processes through which such incidents occurred. The analysis employed Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM), a qualitative method that enables the visualization of multiple trajectories, obligatory passage points, bifurcation points, and equifinality points. Ten publicly available investigation reports on fatal incidents in licensed childcare facilities in Japan were qualitatively analyzed. The findings showed that fatal incidents should not be understood simply as failures occurring immediately before death. Rather, they were formed through processes in which institutional, organizational, and practical conditions accumulated and converged over time. Across cases, loss of psychological leeway among childcare staff and inadequate supervision systems emerged as recurrent obligatory passage points. Beyond these points, adult-centered caregiving that seeks to make children comply and blind spots left unchecked functioned as bifurcation points separating trajectories toward fatal incidents from trajectories toward safe childcare. TEM analysis also suggested that childcare that ensures children remain visible and the prevention of abusive childcare practices may support a contrasting trajectory toward safe childcare. These findings suggest that fatal incidents in licensed childcare facilities cannot be reduced to individual error alone, but need to be understood in relation to institutional, organizational, and practical conditions. </p>

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Trajectories Toward Fatal Incidents in Licensed Childcare Facilities: A TEM Analysis of Investigation Reports

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月1日

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  • Takahiro Nakatomi

摘要

Childcare facilities are a vital social infrastructure that supports children’s development and enables parents to balance work and family life. Ensuring children’s safety in these settings is therefore a fundamental social responsibility. Research on safety in childcare settings has accumulated, but it has largely developed around separate themes such as injury, incident prevention, and maltreatment. As a result, fatal incidents in childcare facilities have rarely been examined as temporal processes across multiple cases. Therefore, this study aimed to examine how institutional, organizational, and practical conditions were involved in the course of fatal incidents in licensed childcare facilities in Japan and to provide a theoretical understanding of the processes through which such incidents occurred. The analysis employed Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM), a qualitative method that enables the visualization of multiple trajectories, obligatory passage points, bifurcation points, and equifinality points. Ten publicly available investigation reports on fatal incidents in licensed childcare facilities in Japan were qualitatively analyzed. The findings showed that fatal incidents should not be understood simply as failures occurring immediately before death. Rather, they were formed through processes in which institutional, organizational, and practical conditions accumulated and converged over time. Across cases, loss of psychological leeway among childcare staff and inadequate supervision systems emerged as recurrent obligatory passage points. Beyond these points, adult-centered caregiving that seeks to make children comply and blind spots left unchecked functioned as bifurcation points separating trajectories toward fatal incidents from trajectories toward safe childcare. TEM analysis also suggested that childcare that ensures children remain visible and the prevention of abusive childcare practices may support a contrasting trajectory toward safe childcare. These findings suggest that fatal incidents in licensed childcare facilities cannot be reduced to individual error alone, but need to be understood in relation to institutional, organizational, and practical conditions.