Apply for educational assistance

Every family has arguments from time to time. Arguments between parents or between parents and children. If the arguments become more and more frequent, this is a great burden. Parents and children sometimes need support. Help with parenting offers this support. Hilfen zur Erziehung is the name for various support services for families with problems and in crisis situations.

If you would like to receive help from the Youth Welfare Office, you must contact them. Help is not an obligation, but an offer. The first step is often a consultation with the youth welfare office. You can explain your problem there. The staff can give you suggestions on how to solve the problem.

Children, adolescents or young adults can also seek help from the youth welfare office on their own. Parents do not need to know about this if the young person does not want it.

Educational support is geared towards the interests of the child or young person. The basis for granting assistance is the assistance plan procedure. The guardians, the children or young people and the youth welfare office are involved in the help plan procedure.

There are different types of educational assistance:

• A pedagogue advises and supports parents with questions about parenting (parenting advice).
• A therapist tries to help the family in group sessions (social group work).
• A psychological or socio-educational specialist tries to help individual family members (parenting support).
• Children get help if their parents have a mental illness.
• Promoting the independence of the child or young person while maintaining a connection to the family (care assistant).
• Care and support for a child in an emergency situation. For example, the child can be placed in a foster family or a residential home for a certain period of time (home education or supervised forms of living and intensive individual socio-educational care).
• For children with mental disabilities, there is also integration assistance (not part of educational assistance). They are of course also entitled to educational assistance. Assistance and integration assistance can be provided in parallel or in combination.

• § Section 27 (2) of the Eighth Social Code (SGB VIII)

Educational support can be considered if it is clear that it will help the children concerned and without it, an upbringing that is in the best interests of the child or young person cannot be guaranteed.

An important prerequisite for the success of the service is your willingness to accept help and work towards change.

• Contact the responsible office with your problems. It will decide whether educational assistance is appropriate and which forms of assistance are suitable.
• The responsible office will help you with the application and also advise you on other assistance options.
• Once the child-raising assistance has been approved, all parties involved draw up an assistance plan together. This plan sets out how the educational support should be organized in your case. It is important that all family members benefit from it.

There is a legal entitlement to educational assistance. In addition to the parents and children, others can also make use of this help, for example a guardian or caregiver of the child.