FDP on families

The FDP aims for parents to pay no daycare fees at all. Given the budget situation, this is to happen step by step by lowering the cap on parental fees year after year.

Daycare should one day cost parents nothing. This cannot happen all at once because money is tight. Today there is a top limit on the fees. This limit should go down every year.

First, the fee cap for children under three is to drop to the level of the cap for older children. After that, the joint cap is to fall by at least ten percent each year. The FDP points to the statewide limit on parental fees introduced with the daycare reform and wants to build on it.

The FDP wants to continue the daycare reform: more full-day places and flexible hours, higher quality standards and more inclusion. The ongoing evaluation of the reform is to guide further steps.

The FDP wants to keep improving daycare. There should be more full-day places and flexible hours. The rules for good care should get stricter. Children with special needs should get help more easily in daycare.

Parents' wishes are to count more in planning, and parents should not have to book more hours than they want. The daycare database is to become easier to use and offer more search criteria, such as bilingual programs. The evaluation running until 2025 is to show where more effort is needed, with a focus on language support. For inclusion, the FDP proposes interdisciplinary teams in regional centers that support facilities as needed. Daycare centers in disadvantaged areas are to get more staff and their own budgets, and home-based childcare is always to be included.

The FDP wants to make training and working conditions for staff in daycare centers and home-based childcare more attractive. This includes more hands-on training, more qualification programs and easier entry for workers with qualifications from elsewhere.

Daycare needs good staff. The FDP wants training to be more hands-on. There should be more courses for staff. People with a qualification from another country should be able to start more easily.

Staff who supervise trainees are to get part of their time set aside for it. More qualification programs are planned for home-based childminders, social-pedagogical assistants and educators. Employees are to get more support in daily work and more chances for personal development. Qualifications from other German states or from abroad should allow entry with as little red tape as possible.

The FDP wants to link support services for families more closely with each other and with youth services. After the pandemic, additional counseling and leisure offerings are to offset burdens, and child protection centers are to be expanded.

There are many kinds of help for families. The FDP wants these services to work together better. After Covid there should be more counseling and leisure activities. Centers that protect children should also grow.

Family education centers, family centers and early-help programs are to be further interlinked. Counseling tied to children's routine checkups should allow more personal exchange. The FDP wants to identify burdens caused by the Covid crisis and offset them through existing structures. The state and municipalities are to work together on implementing the reform of Social Code Book VIII, for example on oversight of residential homes and the so-called inclusive solution. Children and young people should have more say in their immediate surroundings.

The FDP advocates a uniform nationwide rule under which couples who cannot conceive receive promising treatments free of charge. In its view, starting a family should not fail because of cost.

Some couples want a child but cannot have one. Doctors can often help. But this costs money. The FDP wants this help to be free. The rule should be the same all over Germany.

The rule is to apply uniformly across Germany. Treatments with a medical prospect of success would be free. The FDP argues that no one should be denied the chance to start a family for cost reasons.

The FDP wants youth welfare offices to give priority to the Wechselmodell (alternating residence) after parents separate, in which the child lives with each parent in turn. Both parents are to keep a shared everyday life with the child.

Sometimes parents split up. The FDP wants the child to then live with each parent in turn. This is called alternating residence. Youth welfare offices should support this first. That keeps the bond with both parents.

The FDP wants to create the conditions for youth welfare offices to favor this model. It is to apply wherever individual circumstances allow. The reasoning is that personal bonds are preserved mainly through shared daily life.

The FDP backs the demand to write children's rights into the Basic Law, Germany's constitution. This is meant to define children's fundamental rights specifically, including in relation to the state and to parents.

Children have rights like everyone else. The FDP wants their rights written into the Basic Law. The Basic Law is Germany's most important law. This makes children's rights clearer.

In the FDP's view, children have rights as citizens but also deserve special recognition. Their fundamental rights are to be defined in relation to the state and to their parents. The party wants to advance this demand at the federal level.

The FDP wants to review the situation of youth associations and work with them on targeted support. It points to the largely volunteer-run work these associations did during the pandemic. It also calls for more counseling, better conditions in voluntary service, and a stronger voice for young people.

The FDP wants to give youth groups more support. First it wants to check how the groups are doing. Young people should have more say in their towns. People who do voluntary service should get better conditions.

The program calls for a prompt review of the conditions for youth association work, to be followed by support measures developed together with those involved. Counseling and care services are to be strengthened and expanded where needed. The federal government, the state, and municipalities are to tackle child poverty together. Smaller municipalities are also to get help setting up a representative youth council. For people in voluntary service, things like pocket money and travel subsidies are to improve. In addition, every school-age child should have broadband access, and the state parliament should use modern formats to talk more with young people.

The FDP wants youth welfare services to give young people a chance to shape their own lives regardless of their family background. To that end, the agencies involved are to cooperate more closely, and young people without housing are to get help faster.

The FDP wants to give better help to young people in hard situations. Offices and services should work together more closely. Young people without a home should get help fast. There should be a contact point that is always open.

Job centers, youth welfare offices, independent youth welfare providers, and educational institutions are to cooperate more closely. Programs for hard-to-reach young people should be designed so that they continue even after a setback. For young people at acute risk of losing their housing, the program mentions a contact point that is always reachable and emergency apartments, with the target group to be informed about them. A "Housing First" approach, in which housing is provided first, is to be examined for homeless young adults. After the pandemic, schools and youth welfare services are to re-establish contact with young people they supported before and reach those newly affected.

The FDP wants to support the federal government's reform of family law, including recognition of multi-parent families and the new "community of responsibility." In the state, it wants to expand child care and flexible work models so that family and career fit together better. This is to apply to all family forms.

The FDP wants to support new rules for families. A child should be able to have more than two legal parents. People who are not married should also be able to take legal responsibility for each other. Day care should be open longer. Work should become more flexible to help parents.

The community of responsibility (Verantwortungsgemeinschaft) is meant to let two or more adults take legal responsibility for one another without marriage or a romantic relationship. Parental custody is to be exercised on an equal footing and in the child's best interest. On child care, the FDP focuses mainly on longer hours. Together with employers and unions, models for working hours, place of work and job sharing are to be strengthened. Blended and rainbow families are explicitly included.