Youth welfare | “Whatever isn’t incredibly bad is left out.”

Social workers from youth welfare services demonstrate in Hamburg. Photo: dpa/Georg Wendt Two calls to the youth welfare service of the General Social Service in Hamburg, more or less at the same time. Call number one comes from a hospital: a child, under three years old, was admitted with suspicious serious injuries. Call number two: A nine-year-old child shows acute behavior that is dangerous to others in a school. The social workers on duty cannot take on both cases at the same time, as there are not enough people on site to do so. They decide to have the child in the hospital. It later turns out that, fortunately, there was no violence there. However, the school from call number two alerts the police after social services don't show up. She delivers the child to the closed ward of a psychiatric hospital.

C., a social worker, thinks of such anecdotes when he talks about a triage system in youth welfare. His area of ​​concern is child protection and endangerment of children's well-being. He looked after children and young people for eight years. »This crisis service is taking its toll. “Few of us stay with it for several decades,” he says. He has been working in project financing for two years. That's not particularly fun at the moment because they have to cut so many projects.

»Social work is relationship work, not just the management of misery.«

The prioritization of cases is now part of everyday life at the youth welfare offices. There was a personnel assessment project in Hamburg over three years, the implementation of which is anchored in the Social Security Code. Accordingly, there is an additional need for almost 150 staff positions. Due to the budget situation, fewer than half will be filled.

The consequence: "Everything that isn't incredibly bad is left out." Youth welfare offices have to cancel home visits, and they only see families with less acute problems once a year - that's called "standard deviation due to overload." Due to the high fluctuation, there are fewer and fewer experienced and well-trained staff on duty. Young people no longer want to get involved with new carers because they are constantly being reassigned. “Social work is relationship work, not just the management of misery,” says C., who wishes to remain anonymous and whose name is known to the editorial team.

He fears that the black-red federal government's plans would worsen the situation and are inherently "unfriendly to families." By this he means, for example, the reduction of parental allowance and maintenance advances, the consolidation of integration assistance in the offices in order to save costs: "In the end, it is the children who suffer."

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