Grüne on families

The Greens reject cuts to playgrounds, family centers and youth recreation facilities and want to keep these services. They also plan winter playgrounds, more say for young people and help for groups with special needs.

The Greens want to keep playgrounds and youth clubs. Berlin should not cut money there. There should be playgrounds for the winter. This helps families with little money. Right-wing extremists should have no place in youth clubs.

The platform calls savings on open spaces and recreation for young people unacceptable, even when budgets are tight. Organized far-right activists are to be kept out of youth clubs; the party points to mistakes made in the 1990s and 2000s. A broad range of winter playgrounds is meant to give children from low-income families a place to move and meet, in cooperation with social service providers, schools and sports clubs. Children and young people are to have more say. Unaccompanied refugee minors are to get reliable support, and mentally ill and neurodivergent young people better health services.

The Greens want to bring counseling and support to families instead of leaving parents to seek it out themselves. Family service offices, family centers at daycare centers and daycare social work are to be expanded. The platform bases this on the importance of the first months of life.

The Greens want better advice for families. The help should come to the families. It should be in many languages and without barriers. There should be more family offices close to home. They help with forms and with worries.

Outreach services around birth are to be strengthened, and early-help programs made easier to reach. The Greens advocate continuing and expanding the federal program “UPlusE” for parents under psychological strain. Family service offices are to be expanded close to where people live and offer psychosocial counseling in addition to help with finding daycare, dealing with authorities and filling out forms. Family centers attached to daycare centers and daycare social work are to grow. The platform names single parents as a group to receive particular attention.

The Greens want to simplify signing up for a daycare spot. Every family is to receive the Kitagutschein (daycare voucher) without applying when the child turns one. Spots are to be allocated transparently and without discrimination.

The Greens want to make it easier to get a daycare spot. Families should get the daycare voucher automatically. It comes when the child turns one. A letter in several languages explains everything.

The voucher is to come with a cover letter in several languages. A QR code is to lead to nearby counseling services and to appointments for daycare placement. This is meant to make information easy to understand and usable in practice for all families. For the allocation of spots, the platform calls for transparency and the exclusion of discrimination.

The Greens want stronger support for young people in difficult circumstances and see the state as responsible when parents cannot provide it. The focus is on mentally ill and neurodivergent children and teens, and on children who need intensive care.

Some children have a very hard time. For example, children with mental illness. The Greens want to give these children more help at school. The state should step in when parents cannot manage. Very sick children should get places to stay for a short time.

The platform wants to expand school-based rehabilitation programs. Child-raising assistance, outpatient psychiatry and schools would work together at shared sites. A training drive is planned for educational staff at daycare centers and schools so these children get better support in regular institutions. Berlin would also set up short-term residential care for children and teens who need intensive care.

The Greens want to secure child protection counseling centers by law so that their funding no longer depends on the current budget situation. Training for family court judges and court-appointed child advocates would also be written into law.

The Greens want to protect children better. Counseling centers for child protection should have a fixed right to funding. Today the money depends on the budget. Family court judges should take training courses. That way they can understand children better.

Training for family court judges and child advocates would be required by law; besides legal knowledge, they should have pedagogical and psychological skills, especially for hearing children. Violence by one parent against the other should be taken into account in proceedings as a burden on the child. Child protection standards should apply in every institution for children and teens. The party will also examine setting up a state-level survivors' council for people affected by sexualized violence, covering both reappraisal and prevention.