CDU on families

The CDU wants to anchor child protection more firmly in research, training, and practice. It plans professorships for child protection, mandatory continuing education in youth welfare, and an expansion of child protection outpatient clinics. The platform sees well-trained professionals as the core of effective child protection.

The CDU wants to protect children better. Professionals should learn more for this. Universities should have their own professors for child protection. There should be more clinics for child protection.

Child protection is to become a required subject in training for youth welfare office work, and youth welfare professionals are to be required to take ongoing training. The competence center for child protection in health care is to be secured permanently and tied into research and teaching. Cross-disciplinary training and exchange among youth welfare offices, independent providers, police, and the justice system are to grow. Network manager positions are planned for child protection networks. The regional associations (Landschaftsverbände) are to be strengthened as providers of child and adolescent psychiatric care. Child protection staff are to get more offers to help them process distressing experiences.

The CDU wants to make North Rhine-Westphalia the most family- and child-friendly German state. An action plan is meant to make starting a family easier, family centers are to be expanded, and large families are to get relief through a family card.

The CDU wants to help families more. It will write an action plan for that. Families with many children should get a family card. It makes visits to museums or zoos easier. Playgrounds and small soccer fields should be repaired.

Couples are to keep receiving help with fertility treatment. The party wants to keep expanding, funding and connecting family centers and to set up a digital family center for the state. Also planned are an institute for family research, a special program with municipalities for playgrounds and neighborhood soccer fields, permanent funding for family vacations, and statewide events on the International Day of Families. The Familienkarte NRW (family card) is meant to ease access to places such as museums and zoos for families with several children; funding for family associations and the youth welfare ombudsman service will be reviewed.

The CDU wants to maintain pregnancy conflict counseling in the state. Pregnant women should receive help rather than blame and learn how life with a child can work. According to the platform, this also serves the unborn child.

Some women are pregnant and do not know what to do. There is counseling for them. The CDU wants to keep this counseling. Women should get help, not blame. The services should be easier to find.

The platform backs the existing counseling for women facing a pregnancy conflict. Pregnant women should be shown options for a life with a child. To that end, the CDU wants to create the structural conditions and make the services clearer and easier to reach. The reasoning given is women's need for practical help and the protection of unborn life.

The CDU wants to waive parental fees for the third Kita (daycare/preschool) year before school entry as well. Care for children over three would then be entirely free of fees. The platform cites the importance of early education and financial relief for parents.

Parents often pay fees for preschool. The CDU wants to change that. The third year before school should also be free. Then preschool is free for all children over three. Parents keep more money.

The platform views early childhood education as a basis for equal opportunity and a successful school career, especially in the three years before school. With a third fee-free year, parental fees for children over three (Ü3) would disappear entirely. The CDU calls this relief that families notice directly in their wallets.

The CDU wants to continue its guarantee for expanding Kita (daycare) places and set up a system for recruiting skilled staff. Educators are to be relieved of administrative work. Digital place allocation is meant to give parents more planning certainty.

The CDU wants more places in daycare centers. It wants to find more trained staff. Staff should have less office work. Parents should be able to book places online more easily.

Besides the expansion guarantee, the CDU plans a staff management system, will examine a permanent program for everyday helpers, and wants to make their further training permanent. Single-group daycare centers and forest kindergartens are to be strengthened, and STEM education and digital equipment expanded. A digital place management system for daycare and childminding is to be built together with municipalities. At the federal level, the CDU will push for funds from the Gute-Kita-Gesetz (Good Daycare Act) to flow to the states permanently.

The CDU wants to expand the state's Kinder- und Jugendförderplan (child and youth funding plan) and keep the automatic annual funding adjustment. New priorities are to include inclusion, catching up after the COVID-19 pandemic, and mental health. An action plan is to set rules for youth participation.

The state pays for programs for children and young people. The CDU wants to keep raising this money. There should be more programs for young people with disabilities. There should be money for vacation camps. Young people should have more say.

The automatic funding adjustment is to continue, and a new funding area is to support inclusion and young people with disabilities. Catching up after COVID becomes part of the plan, including a review of how mentoring can be supported. A special grant for vacation camps and a special program to refurbish child and youth centers are planned. An action plan on youth participation is to define criteria and describe how municipalities and the state take young people's interests into account.