SSW on families

The SSW wants to replace joint tax splitting for married couples with a family-based splitting model. The tax code should reflect today's variety of family arrangements instead of mainly favoring marriage.

Married couples often pay less tax today. This is called spousal splitting. The SSW wants to change that. The tax benefit should apply to all families. Families today live in many different ways.

The platform criticizes that the state still favors marriage in the tax code and treats it as the classic family model. It says the benefit is especially large for single-earner marriages with high incomes. Because ways of life and family arrangements have become more varied, the party argues that family splitting would bring tax fairness to all families.

The SSW wants to combine benefits that counter poverty and child poverty and make them available online, arguing that applications are too complicated for many families. Children should also get free access to sports and cultural activities.

The SSW wants to make help for poor families simpler. The different kinds of help should be combined. Families should be able to apply online. Children should get sports and culture for free.

The program points to more than 60,000 children in Schleswig-Holstein who live in poverty or are at risk of it. Family policy benefits are to be reviewed for effectiveness and merged where useful. Family centers would keep receiving the same level of state funding, and family education centers would also be supported. The SSW wants to keep the vacation subsidy for low-income and large families, promote it more, and raise the funds as needed.

The SSW wants young people to have more say in schools, leisure facilities, universities and municipalities. Decisions that affect them should be made together with them.

The SSW wants children and young people to have more say. This applies to schools, leisure facilities and universities. Towns should also ask young people for their views. Children should be able to reach a complaints office easily.

Municipalities are to hold regular exchanges with children and young people and make their participation permanent. An easily accessible ombuds office is to be available to all children. Children in homes and other youth welfare services are to get child-appropriate conditions and more say. Open youth work is to receive lasting, adequate funding. Volunteer services are to become more attractive through better pay, uniform recognition at universities and discounted public transit, and are to be opened to people with disabilities.

The SSW calls for support for children and young people who fell behind because of the pandemic. If federal funding is not enough, the state should launch and pay for its own programs.

Many children missed out during the COVID period. The SSW wants to help them. There should be help with learning and with mental health. More sports and leisure activities are also planned. If federal money is not enough, the state should pay.

The support is to be tailored separately to daycare children and schoolchildren. It includes psychological care, extra sports, leisure and vacation activities, everyday help and support in catching up on schoolwork. The state is to start its own catch-up programs if the federal measures fall short.

The SSW wants to phase out daycare fees and guarantee every child a place. At the same time, more places are to be created and the quality of early education improved.

The SSW wants daycare to cost nothing. This should happen step by step. Every child should get a place. Meals in daycare should also be free and healthy.

The SSW sees the existing cap on parental fees as only a first step; elsewhere it says the state should cover daycare costs in full. Every child is to be offered a free, healthy meal at the facility. For children under three, the enrollment rate is to rise above 90 percent, following the Scandinavian model, with incentives for parents. The federal government, state and municipalities are to staff and fund daycare centers so that every child can be admitted in the medium term. Children with disabilities or at risk of disability are to get better support.

The SSW wants to improve the finances of single parents and young families and make benefits easier to access. The platform cites the heavier burden on single parents and says applications are too complicated for many families.

The SSW wants to help single parents and young families. Single parents with low pay should not lose housing benefit. People buying their first home to live in should pay less tax. Applying for family benefits should become easier.

The housing benefit law is to be changed so that working single parents with very low incomes no longer face losses that, according to the platform, result from the Second Corona Tax Relief Act. An allowance on the real estate transfer tax is to apply to the first purchase of an owner-occupied home. Family benefits are to be bundled, simplified and made available for online application. Children are to have free access to sports and cultural activities. State subsidies for vacations for large or low-income families are to be kept.