Linke on families

The Left wants to abolish parental fees for kindergarten in Thuringia entirely. First a third year is to become free, then the whole kindergarten period.

The Left wants parents to pay nothing for kindergarten. Today two years are free. By 2025 a third year should be added. Later the whole time should be free.

According to the platform, the two fee-free years so far relieve about 20,000 families by an average of 3,854 euros per child. The third year is to follow by 2025. Full abolition of fees is planned for the 2024 to 2029 term. The party argues that education should not depend on a family's income.

The Left wants to put the state's family support on a permanent footing and provide free, easily accessible leisure activities for families. The Thuringian family card would continue as an app. Foster and adoptive families would be covered by uniform professional standards at youth welfare offices across the state.

The Left wants to help families more. There should be leisure activities that cost nothing. The family card should be available as an app. Foster families should get equally good help from the youth office everywhere in Thuringia.

With the family card, families would eventually be able to use cultural and leisure facilities worth up to 50 euros. Parent-child centers, neighborhood shops and multigenerational houses would keep receiving funding, as would supra-local family support, especially for low-income families. A regular generations report is to provide recommendations for family and senior policy. Standards for long-term, crisis and temporary foster care are to be drawn up together with professionals and parent representatives. The party stresses that it treats all family forms equally.

The Left wants to further raise funding for local youth services and youth social work and secure both for the long term in towns and rural areas. Youth centers and clubs are to become accessible when they are converted or newly built. The aim is to give young people support and spaces for their own initiatives.

The Left wants to give more money to youth work. Young people should have meeting places and leisure activities close to home. Youth centers should be built without barriers. Then young people with disabilities can take part too.

The party calls local youth funding and youth social work two central pillars of support for young people. Spaces close to home are to be supported, explicitly including self-managed centers. Money for building and converting youth facilities is to be targeted at accessibility so that young people with physical impairments can participate as well. Youth research is also to be strengthened.

The Left wants to enshrine the office of the state commissioner for child protection in law to secure it permanently. Institutions that work with children and young people are to get help with their own protection plans. The party wants to combat violence in families through better cooperation among authorities.

The Left wants to protect children better from violence. Thuringia has a commissioner for child protection. This office should be written into a law. Schools, kindergartens and clubs should get help with protection plans.

The commissioner has existed since 2020 as a coordinating post within the state government. Schools, kindergartens, clubs and associations are to keep receiving help in drawing up child protection plans, and the child protection networks are to be funded. The party wants to support the further development of the state survivors' council, which represents people who experienced sexualized violence in childhood and youth. Police, youth welfare services and shelters are to work together more closely and in a better coordinated way on domestic violence.