Youth welfare planning

Youth welfare planning is a partial aspect of social planning and addresses the attempt to provide a defined social area (e.g. a municipality) with services of youth welfare (e.g. day-care centers, educational help, youth social work offers , open and binding ) that are tailored to needs (in perspective) Youth work, etc.) on the basis of empirically supported, future-oriented planning.

Definition and goals of youth welfare planning

Youth welfare planning can be "as an instrument for the systematic, innovative and thus future-oriented design and development of the fields of action of youth welfare with the aim of maintaining or creating positive living conditions for young people and their families (§ 1 KJHG) and a qualitative and quantitative needs-based youth welfare offer in good time and to provide enough (§ 19 KJHG). As specialist planning, youth welfare planning is about the development of strategies to solve the complex tasks of youth welfare ”(Jordan / Schone 1992 p.19).

Youth welfare planning is thus the central control instrument of child and youth welfare.

It is important to take into account social developments that determine the lives of children and young people and their families, as well as to continuously develop the professional quality and the necessary standard in the services, measures and offers of local youth welfare.

Concept and history

Until the 1960s, youth welfare was largely characterized by abstinence from planning. “In this area, the concept of planning was associated in particular with the idea of control, narrowing down social work and the loss of spontaneity, creativity and room for maneuver. This resistance results essentially from a socio-political thinking that - based on values such as pluralism , subsidiarity , personal proximity, ideological ties - equated public planning in the social sector with state regulation and lack of freedom "

It was only with the socio-political reform optimism of the social-liberal government coalition that the first wave of approaches to social planning set in, which, however, was increasingly overshadowed by social-technocratic tendencies and in the 1980s again led to a skepticism of planning (cf.Merchel 1994, p. 12).

Section 80 youth welfare planning

Social Code (SGB) - Eighth book (VIII) - Child and youth welfare - (Article 1 of the law of June 26, 1990, Federal Law Gazette I p. 1163)

Section 80 youth welfare planning

(1) The public youth welfare organizations have responsibility for planning within the framework of their planning

1. determine the inventory of facilities and services,

2. to determine the needs, taking into account the wishes, needs and interests of the young people and the legal guardians for a medium-term period and

3. plan the projects necessary to meet the needs in good time and sufficiently; In doing so, precautions must be taken so that an unforeseen need can be satisfied.

(2) Facilities and services should be planned so that in particular

1. Contacts in the family and in the social environment can be maintained and maintained,

2. the most effective, diverse and coordinated offer of youth welfare services is guaranteed,

3. young people and families in endangered areas of life and living are given special support,

4. Mothers and fathers can better combine family responsibilities and work.

(3) The public youth welfare organizations must involve the recognized independent youth welfare organizations in all phases of their planning at an early stage. For this purpose they are to be heard by the youth welfare committee, insofar as they are active supra-local, within the framework of the youth welfare planning of the supra-local sponsor from the state youth welfare committee. The state law regulates the details.

(4) The public youth welfare agencies should work towards ensuring that youth welfare planning and other local and regional planning are coordinated and that the planning as a whole takes into account the needs and interests of young people and their families.

Planning approaches

Area-oriented planning structures the process from the perspective of the various fields of action of youth welfare. "In each of these fields of work, the inventory is asked, an assessment of the inventory is made with regard to the appropriateness of the offer, and measures to expand and qualitatively change the offer in the corresponding area are proposed" (ibid., P. 75 f. ). Area-oriented planning is based on the assumption that youth welfare as a whole can be reconstructed and further developed in terms of planning using a modular principle across the individual fields of work.

Social space-oriented planning is based on the entirety of a delimited social space (e.g. district, residential area) as a planning unit. "The methodology here (...) is based on a 'socio-spatial analysis' in order to obtain, in a differentiated and regionalized form, information about life situations, socialization needs, potential for action and deficit situations of children, adolescents and their families. Based on the hypothesis that Let different concentrations of problem situations be found in a planning area, on the one hand it should enable a socio-spatial setting of priorities and resource concentration, on the other hand it should also be closer to the addressees "(Jordan / Schone 1992, p.45).

A goal-oriented planning process derives the content-related demands on adequate youth welfare from a superordinate target system of socio-educational interventions. "Planning takes place in the most logical and comprehensible derivation (deduction) of individual requirements for youth welfare from the goals defined as central, as well as in a discourse on the question of which offers youth welfare must create in qualitative and quantitative terms in order to achieve the respective goals Within the scope of such a deductive thinking model, an attempt is made to develop general and detailed goals from general norms using various steps to derive them in order to obtain the basis for evaluating and further shaping the local youth welfare services "(Merchel 1994, p. 78 ).

A target group-oriented approach concentrates the planning efforts on certain target groups "who differ from other population groups due to one or more characteristics in their particular living situation. Such characteristics can include gender, nationality, social class, belonging to a certain age group, certain social abnormalities (e.g. drug consumption) etc. "(ibid., p. 80).

(c) Techniques and Procedures

The indicated range of conceptual orientations in youth welfare planning makes it clear that, depending on the approach chosen, very different instruments are required in order to design the planning process appropriately and professionally. In any case, it can be stated that the quality of the database, the existing, collected and analyzed information not only represent the basis of planning action, but also determine the appropriateness of the planning results.

Individual evidence

↑ Michael Galuske: Methods of Social Work . 10th edition. Beltz Juventa, ISBN 978-3-7799-1447-1 , p. 372 .
↑ Jordan / Schone: Jordan / Schone . 1992, p. 14 .
↑ Federal Office of Justice: Social Code (SGB) - Eighth Book (VIII) - Child and youth welfare. Retrieved May 3, 2020 .
↑ Jordan / Schone: Jordan / Schone . 1992, p. 42 .

[1] Michael Galuske: Methods of Social Work . 10th edition. Beltz Juventa, ISBN 978-3-7799-1447-1 , p. 372 .

[2] Jordan / Schone: Jordan / Schone . 1992, p. 14 .

[3] Federal Office of Justice: Social Code (SGB) - Eighth Book (VIII) - Child and youth welfare. Retrieved May 3, 2020 .

[4] Jordan / Schone: Jordan / Schone . 1992, p. 42 .