CDU on families

The CDU stands by the existing fee exemption for kindergarten and aims to abolish fees entirely once quality and staffing have improved. It also wants kindergarten meals to become cheaper.

Part of kindergarten is already free today. That should stay. Later, kindergarten should be fully free. But first the CDU wants more staff and better quality. Meals should also get cheaper.

In the platform, full fee exemption comes after improvements in quality and staffing. For kindergarten meals, the CDU wants to push for the reduced VAT rate of 7 percent. In the party's view, regular meals and a hot lunch in kindergarten and elementary school should not depend on parents' income. Meals are to meet the quality standards of the German Nutrition Society.

The CDU wants to develop Thuringia's parent-child centers into a statewide network of family centers. In addition, state programs for language support and diversity are to continue, and home-based daycare is to be strengthened.

Kindergartens should also advise and help families. There should be such family centers all over Thuringia. Programs for language support should continue. Home daycare providers should get fair pay.

In the family centers, family education, counseling, and support are to be brought closer together and linked with child and youth services. The state programs “Sprach-Kitas” (language daycare centers) and “Vielfalt vor Ort” (diversity on site) are to continue because, according to the platform, kindergartens have become more diverse. Home daycare providers are to be paid appropriately, with their material costs taken into account. The plan also includes age-appropriate, time-limited media education as well as motor-skill tests and exercise programs.

The CDU wants to keep Ehegattensplitting (joint tax filing for married couples) and expand it into family splitting, where each child lowers the tax burden. Child care costs are to be deductible up to 6,000 euros per child per year. Single parents are to get a higher tax relief amount.

The CDU wants families to pay less tax. With each child, the tax should go down. Parents should be able to deduct child care costs from their taxes. People raising children alone should get more relief.

The number of children and the work of raising them are to count more in pension and long-term care insurance. The CDU wants to push at the federal level for single parents: only half of the child benefit is to be offset against advance child support, and access to housing benefit is to be made easier. Family time accounts are also planned, where employees save part of their pay tax-free and draw on it in periods of reduced work. This is meant to make child care and care for relatives more flexible.

The CDU wants to inform families better about available benefits, give them more say vis-à-vis the state government, and offer them regular free admission to cultural institutions. It argues that many families do not know what support exists.

Many families do not know what help is available. The CDU wants to put all the information in one app. Families should have more say in politics. Four times a year, families should get into museums and theaters for free.

Information on services for families is to be bundled in the ThüringenApp. The platform announces a state family strategy, wants to strengthen family representatives on the state family council, and plans to revise the state family support act for this purpose. Once per quarter there would be a family culture day, when families, children and young people pay no admission at state-funded cultural institutions. In general, the CDU stresses parents' responsibility for raising children; the state should step in only in cases of abuse or risk to the child's welfare.

The CDU wants to keep maternity clinics open in rural areas as well, support family midwives, and reliably fund pregnancy conflict counseling centers. The party sees this counseling as part of protecting life and helping women with unwanted pregnancies.

The CDU wants maternity clinics in rural areas too. Midwives should support families after a birth. There should be enough money for this. Counseling centers for women with unwanted pregnancies should also get secure funding.

Maternity care is to be secured statewide through new models such as midwife gateway practices or midwife-led delivery rooms. A maternity care plan is to be developed with the round table on "Family and Birth," and the "Breastfeeding-Friendly Municipality" initiative is supported. The CDU wants to recruit more family midwives and secure their funding regardless of birth numbers. For pregnancy conflict counseling, the variety of providers is to be preserved and adequately funded.

The CDU plans a child protection drive with a dedicated child protection act to better shield children from violence, neglect and abuse. This includes new police powers, more counseling for parents, and expanded medical protection structures.

The CDU wants to protect children better from violence. There should be a new law for this. Police should be able to ban dangerous people from coming near children. They should be able to check this with an electronic ankle monitor. Parents in trouble should get help more easily.

The planned law is meant to put child welfare and child health at the center, both offline and online. Where physical or sexual violence threatens, contact and proximity bans and electronic ankle monitoring are to become legally possible and enforceable. Child protection outpatient clinics are to be expanded, professional exchange among doctors given a legal basis, and a state coordination office for medical child protection anchored in law. Childhood Houses are to be set up in Thuringia, where doctors and investigators handle cases jointly and in a trauma-sensitive way. The CDU wants to speed up family court proceedings on protection from violence and offer overwhelmed parents easy-access support, for example in family centers.