Parliamentary groups in the Bundestag are currently debating the basic child welfare bill, considered the Greens' prestigious social policy project. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had asked Lisa Paus to review it: there should be no disproportionate administrative efforts or incentives for people to stop working due to higher social benefits.
Representatives of employment centers see “devastating social and financial consequences” in the basic child welfare project
The personnel councils of the employment offices have expressed their concerns in a letter addressed to Olaf Scholz. The traffic light bill counteracts the objectives associated with it “in the most absurd way”, says the letter to which the “Spiegel” has access.
The staff councils of the employment centers further consider that the planned management of social benefits is “simply unrealistic and cannot be implemented in this way.” The current bill would have “devastating social and financial consequences” for the “most needy” people in Germany. The conclusion of the dismissal letter is: “The welfare state will suffer irreparable damage in the long term.”
Clear criticism also of Paus himself
The representatives of the employment office warn in the letter to Scholz that the amount of compensation “would not completely cover the sociocultural subsistence minimum of children and young people as stipulated in the Constitution.” This also applies to claims from other social systems. “Therefore, families eligible for citizenship benefits who currently receive their benefits from a single source at the employment office will in future have to receive these benefits from up to five different authorities (family service, housing benefits office , employment agency, municipality). and employment center)”, he continues.
They also clearly criticize Paus's recent statements that in the end fewer than 5,000 additional positions will be needed in the family budget. In fact, the need is quite underestimated, also because the new dual responsibilities cannot save any positions in the previous authorities. Personnel councils are particularly outraged by the statement that “children and young people must be freed from the stigmatization of advice and support from employment offices.” By doing so, the federal government would be accusing them of “creating stigmatizing realities of life through their work.”
However, staff advisors also stressed that they support the project's core goals. With basic child security, the federal government wants to bundle previous benefits such as child benefit, citizen child benefit or child benefit. The aim is to ensure that all families entitled to the corresponding benefits receive them in full in the future. According to the Ministry of the Family, so far this has only happened in a fraction of them. The federal government wants, among other things, to effectively combat and prevent child poverty.