Education aids

In Germany, educational assistance is provided by the state (municipal) services of child and youth welfare for families with children .

This assistance is regulated by law in Sections 27–40 of SGB VIII - Children and Youth Welfare . Aid is listed in Sections 28–35a and is usually granted by the local youth welfare offices after the assistance plan procedure ( Section 36 ) has been carried out .

When using facilities, services and events of recognized providers of free youth welfare ( Section 4 of Book VIII of the Social Code), a triangular relationship arises in the service provision law between service provider, service provider and beneficiary.

Legal claim

Persons having custody - usually the parents , optionally, a guardian or caregiver - have a legal right to educational assistance for herself and her child, "when the interests of the child or the young people appropriate education is not guaranteed and aid for its development suitable and necessary is “( Section 27 (1) SGB VIII). There is no entitlement to a specific form of help, but only to a suitable and necessary form of help. The basis for the granting of appropriate educational offers is the assistance plan procedure , in which the legal guardians , the children or adolescents as well as the youth welfare office must be involved.

Help types

There is a large number of different offers of outpatient , partial and inpatient educational aids. The Child and Youth Welfare Act gives examples of the types of benefits:

Section 28 educational counseling ,
Section 29 Social group work ,
Section 30 educational assistance ,
Section 31 Social pedagogical family support ,
Section 32 upbringing in a day group ,
Section 33 full-time care ,
§ 34 home education , assisted living and
Section 35 Intensive, socio-educational individual support
Integration assistance for mentally handicapped children and young people ( Section 35a ) has a special status . This is not one of the educational aids. The paragraph contains its own legal claim . The beneficiaries are the child or the young person himself.

Flexible parenting assistance is legally granted as benefits according to Section 27, Paragraph 2 of Book VIII of the Social Code. It is important that the content and form of the offer of help must be adapted to the respective individual case so that difficult life situations can be mastered by them themselves, in particular by promoting and strengthening the existing skills and knowledge of the people seeking help . Even young adults , according to § 41 received SGB VIII Educational assistance - help for young adults .

So-called family classes are a special form of family help . Parents and children attend a special school class once a week under psychological and educational guidance.

criticism

A fundamental problem with the current legal situation is that the legal entitlement lies exclusively with the custodian . Children and adolescents are often the primary recipients of help (for example, in the case of residential accommodation, social group work, etc.), but they have (almost) no possibility of requesting assistance and are only included in the assistance plan procedure.

In addition, there are problems with indefinite legal terms. Child welfare is a relatively well-defined legal term, but not suitability and necessity . In particular, when the service provider ( municipality ) is in a bad financial situation , protracted conflicts arise again and again. Affected families often find it difficult to enforce their legal rights.

Practical implementation

In the last few years, the help for education, especially in the outpatient area, has been greatly expanded, especially in large cities, in order to avoid more cost-intensive measures such as inpatient accommodation in advance. In this area, a "flexibilization of assistance" was also introduced, so that individual social pedagogues must be able to offer several forms of assistance in one person.

In practice in smaller cities and rural regions, the implementation and legal entitlement of the individual aid is handled and enforced in a relatively inflexible manner. Individual types of help are often preferred in the implementation, although this does not entirely correspond to the educational needs. In many places, the need for low-threshold educational help is denied by the youth welfare office and it is pointed out that public leisure facilities have the appropriate offers for this. In some regions individual forms of help ( for example “social group work” ) do not exist at all. At the same time, help is being chosen more and more frequently when the help is given that is one level lower in intensity than is actually necessary. On the other hand, the duration of the support plans is drastically reduced, which sometimes forces the support provider to completely redesign the targeted type of support.

This approach of the public service provider is justified with the tight budget situation of most German municipalities for years and a general increase in demand.

Another problem is budgeting the corresponding funds. The start of assistance is often delayed due to the strained budget situation, but an assistance plan procedure that is shortened in a rush - because money can only be spent again - is also not uncommon.

Implementation of the aids

The aids listed above are usually provided by social pedagogues , educators , foster parents , curative pedagogues , psychologists or therapists of various types, according to the recommendations of the Federal Working Group of State Youth Welfare Offices.

literature

Hans-Ulrich Krause, Friedhelm Peters (ed.): Basic knowledge of educational aids - initial questions, key topics, challenges. Weinheim / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7799-1779-3 .
Mechthild Seithe, Matthias Heintz: Outpatient help for education and social space orientation. Plea for a controversial concept of child and youth welfare in times of the ideology of utility. Leverkusen-Opladen 2014, ISBN 978-384740623-5 .