SPD on families

The SPD wants to keep five hours of daycare and childminder care per day free of charge. It also wants to strengthen care in early and late hours and extend how long a daycare voucher is valid.

Five hours of daycare a day are free in Hamburg. The SPD wants to keep it that way. Daycare should offer more care early and late in the day. The daycare voucher should be valid for longer.

The platform keeps the daycare voucher system and the legal right to a daycare place. Off-hours care is to be expanded so that parents working shifts and weekends can combine work and family. The SPD argues that this helps women in particular return to work and reduces the risk of poverty in old age. A longer voucher validity is meant to simplify the application process.

The SPD wants to keep spending more than one billion euros a year on daycare and early education. This includes a renovation program, extra support for daycare centers in disadvantaged neighborhoods and more places for children with special needs.

The SPD wants to spend a lot of money on daycare. It should be more than one billion euros a year. Daycare buildings should be renovated. Centers in poorer neighborhoods get extra help. Children with disabilities should get more places.

The platform provides for a renovation program for daycare centers. Centers in neighborhoods with particular challenges are to receive extra support for language, movement and health programs. Together with providers, more places are to be created for children who need integration assistance. Children with disabilities should also be able to be cared for by childminders in the future.

The SPD wants to train more early childhood educators and make entry into the profession more flexible. It advocates appropriate pay under collective agreements.

Daycare centers need more educators. The SPD wants to create more training places. People from other jobs should be able to switch more easily. Foreign degrees should be recognized more easily. Pay should follow union wage agreements.

The plan includes more training places in social and educational professions and stronger career guidance. Retraining into childcare professions is to be possible, related professions are to be drawn on, and entry for people with low qualifications is to be made easier. Foreign qualifications are to be recognized more easily. The training system is to become more permeable and transparent.

The SPD wants to expand parent-child centers and family counseling and to support all types of families. At the federal level it advocates adjusting financial benefits for families and fighting child poverty.

Families should get more counseling. There should be more parent-child centers. The SPD wants to support all kinds of families. It also wants the federal government to help families better with money. Fewer children should be poor.

The platform explicitly names blended families, rainbow families, foster families and single parents as equally supported family types. Parent-child centers and other counseling services are to get more capacity. The "Frühe Hilfen" (early support) approach, with baby guides in maternity clinics, regional family teams and parent guides, is described as a key tool. Federal financial benefits are to be developed according to need.

The SPD wants to better protect children from neglect, violence and sexual abuse. To that end, the Allgemeiner Sozialer Dienst (general social service) is to be refocused and agencies are to cooperate more closely.

Children should be safe from violence and abuse. The city's social service should work closer to families. Youth office, schools, daycare and police should work together better. There should be more places for children in need.

The ASD is to take on more social work tasks and keep adequate staffing. The youth welfare office, schools, daycare centers, police, prosecutors and courts are to spot risks earlier. After children are taken into care, the public youth welfare provider will create places as needed. Also planned are more official guardianships, an aftercare project for care leavers, securing the "Childhood-Haus" and a federal push for parental allowance for foster parents.