The goal is to provide service-oriented access to the respective benefits and support options through close cooperation, and which does not ask a lot of the respective families. By doing so, the participants are aiming to increase the take-up of the various family benefits. A new development: families will also be advised on the possible combinations of support and benefits available from both organisations.
To achieve this goal, the network aims to provide advice at as many locations as possible, and above all else, online, so as to support the working parents who are affected. In this respect, both organisations are bringing their expertise to the table.
At a time of financial uncertainty due to the pandemic, the energy crisis and inflation, families are being affected by considerable social and financial risks.
To emphasize the social awareness of all the participants, a special day was chosen for the signing of the agreement: the day before International Human Rights Day. Children have the right to grow up healthy, free from violence and free from poverty. Children’s rights are also human rights, which is a further aspiration of this cooperation.
Statement by Karsten Bunk, Director of the Family Benefits Office of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), and Cornelia Spachtholz, Chair of the German Association of Working Mothers (VBM) and initiator of Equal Pension Day:
“We help families! For the Family Benefits Office of the BA, this is more than just an advertising slogan. In many areas, the help is only possible in an ever-growing network of local stakeholders which have the same goal in mind. In signing our cooperation agreement with VBM, we are working together and adding another important building block to the foundations which have already been put in place.
This not only gives us a much broader professional base – thinking outside the box together also opens up many other topics for us, and enables us to learn from and with each other on a long term basis.
Working parents need a good work-life balance and families need infrastructure, time and money. Informing families about their entitlements to family benefits in a low-threshold and accessible way is a joint goal that we share.
Through collaborations like this and the comprehensive level of cooperation that results, we can set an example for how it is possible to combine, modernise and further develop family-related services so that we are positioned even better in the future when it comes to family benefits in Germany.”
Families can find all the latest information on Child Benefit and the Child Allowance online at www.familienkasse.de.
About the VBM
Since 1990, the German Association of Working Mothers (Verband berufstätiger Mütter e.V., VBM) has been working on a non-partisan, non-denominational, non-profit and voluntary basis to achieve a better work / life balance - for women and men from the course-of-life perspective - as a lobby group for working mothers and women who want to be working mothers (again).
We contribute our expertise, experience and perspectives in various event formats, committees and collaborations, as well as in our publications and interviews.
In 2014, we launched Equal Pension Day to address the huge pension gap between women and men which was revealed in the 2011 study by the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs.
As members of the German Women’s Council (Deutscher Frauenrat), in our role as a lobby group for working mothers, we are also committed to the equality and equal rights of women and men, and from our point of view, to the equal rights of mothers and fathers. Our commitment extends to the topics of family and role models, care and education, law and taxes as well as the world of work and careers.
For further information about our goals, visit:
http://vbm-online.de/der-verband/unsere-ziele-deine-lobby
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