Care is a key concept in different interpretations of health, illness and cure, and it has a major influence on various fields of research in medical and health sociology. Nevertheless it has yet to evolve into a well-established conceptual framework in these areas. Therefore in this paper we explore how care as a social determinant of health impacts health outcomes, and how concepts of social determinants of care enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and pathways. We place TEAM-ECD framework at the centre of our analysis, because care is conceived of neither as a factor of inequality its own right, nor as a source of health inequalities by other frameworks that are in use in this field. We aim to fill these gaps by incorporating few approaches of care inequalities into the above-mentioned framework for the social determinants of healthy early childhood development.