SPD on families

The SPD wants to conclude a pact for greater reliability in daycare centers (Kitas) with providers and other partners. The goals are a place for every child, enough well-trained staff, strong center management and dependable opening hours.

The SPD wants families to be able to rely on daycare. Every child should get a place. Daycare centers should have enough staff and stay open reliably. The SPD wants to make a pact with daycare providers. A pact is a firm agreement.

The state would keep co-funding substitute staff from the first day and offer providers additional help. The mix of municipal, church-run and other independent providers is to be supported further. Municipalities would get help creating places for children from age two where these are still lacking. Family-based child care and company daycare centers are also to be supported. The program notes that the state spent more than one billion euros on early childhood education in 2025 and announces more funding.

The SPD pledges that parents will continue to pay no fees for daycare for children aged two and older. The Kita-Zukunftsgesetz (the state's daycare law) is to be revised in the next term, with less red tape and more time for center managers.

Daycare is free for parents today once a child is two years old. The SPD wants to keep it that way. It also wants to improve the daycare law. There should be less paperwork. Daycare managers should get more time for good programs.

The program justifies fee-free education by saying that parents' background and income should not determine educational success. The SPD regards the Kita-Zukunftsgesetz as a good foundation that it wants to develop further together with those involved in the daycare sector. In the party's view, unnecessary bureaucracy should be removed. Managers are to get more time to develop and carry out educational programs.

The SPD wants to expand contact points for families and deploy family guides who mainly help poor families claim the benefits they are entitled to. An Aktionsplan Familie (family action plan) is meant to make everyday support more targeted.

The SPD wants to give families more advice and help. Family guides should help poor families. They show which benefits a family can get. There should also be an action plan for families.

Family education centers, family houses, and family centers at elementary schools are to be strengthened and expanded. The guides add to the digital family atlas, which gathers information and help in one place. The action plan is to be drawn up with independent welfare organizations and researchers. At the federal level the party wants to develop family caregiver leave further, and housing subsidies are to be geared to young families through home-ownership support and binding social housing quotas. The platform defines family as any group in which people take responsibility for one another.

The SPD wants to better protect children growing up in especially difficult circumstances and expand the network of child intervention centers for that purpose. The effort against sexual violence toward children is to continue.

The SPD wants to protect children better from violence. There should be more help centers for affected children. Experts should work together more closely. The fight against sexual violence toward children goes on.

This refers, for example, to children whose parents have a mental illness or addiction and to children who experience domestic or sexual violence. The institutions and disciplines involved are to work together more closely so that help arrives early. The platform points to the office of a state commissioner against sexual violence toward children and young people. The recommendations of the pact against sexual violence are to be carried out in exchange with the survivors' council.

The SPD wants family law that reflects different kinds of families. This includes updated adoption and parentage law and legal recognition of rainbow families. Every child should have two legal parents from birth.

The SPD wants to change family law. Two married women should both count as mothers right away. Unmarried same-sex couples should also be allowed to adopt. Every child should have two legal parents from the start.

The platform names two concrete demands. In marriages between two women, the second woman should automatically be recognized as co-mother. Adoption law should also be opened to same-sex couples who are not married. The SPD argues that the law should match the reality of diverse families. Both matters are governed by federal law, and the party says it will advocate for these changes.

The SPD wants to involve children and young people more in decisions and treats youth policy as a task for all policy areas. The Landesjugendbeirat (state youth advisory council) is to be strengthened, and youth work is to receive more funding.

The SPD wants young people to have more of a say. The state youth advisory council advises the government. It should become stronger. Youth work and holiday camps should get more money.

The youth strategy JES! is to be updated together with youth associations. The SPD wants to support youth rooms and open youth centers as meeting places in towns and rural areas, including local participation structures. Funding for social education activities such as holiday camps is to rise, as is funding for full-time youth work professionals. Youth hostels, family vacation centers and Naturfreunde houses are to keep receiving targeted support. The platform also wants to strengthen young people's mental health through prevention, school psychology and easier access to therapy.