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Family centers NRW
A network for the promotion and support of children and families
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Family centers are a place of encounter in the district. They offer children and parents easily accessible services and advice on everyday, child-rearing and educational issues. But what distinguishes them and where is the difference to a "normal" daycare center?
Read here what makes family centers so special and how parents can benefit from the wide range of services they offer.
What are family centers for?
The best possible support for families - especially in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods and social hotspots - that is one of the most important goals of the NRW state government. Family centers play an important key role in this.
Widely opened doors for families help to establish proximity and trust. This is the basis for making help and support more easily accessible. The low-threshold offers of the family centers invite people to come, join in, exchange ideas and undertake activities together. This makes it easier to close gaps in education and improve children's chances of starting out. In addition, mothers and fathers are approached in a targeted manner in order to strengthen the educational and child-rearing skills of parents.
The offers are made in cooperation with local sponsors and cooperation partners. The family centers cooperate, for example, with the elementary school nearby, with the gymnastics and sports clubs in the district, with educational counseling, with therapists, or with debt counseling.
Diverse offerings - easily accessible on site
The family centers focus on the entire family. The employees in the teams know the social situation of the families in the district exactly and can adjust their offers especially to the needs of the parents on the spot.
This means that support services can be organized and arranged that are close to everyday life and easily accessible for parents and children. Families in challenging life situations, single parents and families with a migration background benefit from this in particular.
Examples of offerings in family centers:
Support in applying for family benefits and filling out forms
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Talking offers to solve everyday conflicts
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Counseling parents on issues of partnership
Counseling parents in matters of upbringing, education and health of their children
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Open parent café/parent breakfast
Father-child days/weekends
Courses and events to strengthen parenting and/or child-rearing skills
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Open consultation hours with a social pedagogue or family therapist
Toddler groups
Action days
Relaxation activities for parents and children
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Language development for children
Early musical education
Creative offers
Support offers for the prevention of dyslexia
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Parent and child health promotion classes
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Movement offers
Nutritional offers and cooking classes for parents and children
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Therapy offers in cooperation with curative teachers, speech therapists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists
The exemplary enumeration of the offers represents only a small spectrum of the entire range of offers. The family centers are constantly developing adapted offers that are flexibly aligned with the individual needs of local families.
Where can we find help and advice at a family center near us?
In North Rhine-Westphalia, there will be around 3,120 family centers nationwide in the 2022/2023 kindergarten year. In the 2023/2024 kindergarten year, this number will increase by another 150 facilities.
A free online service allows you to search specifically for family centers in the area where you live. The website www.kita.nrw.de provides further information on all daycare centers and family centers in North Rhine-Westphalia.
To search directly for daycare centers and family centers, go this way: www.kita-finder.nrw.de
More informationLinks for further reading
A detailed presentation of the family centers NRW can be found on the associated website.
Some impressions of the work in family centers are offered by the video films "15 Years of the NRW Family Center" as well as "Family Center Scavenger Hunt", which you can watch on the family center website. The videos are part of the documentation of the digital specialist congress "NRW Specialist Centers - More Opportunities in the New Decade" in 2021.
In 2022, the Arnsberg Model Family Center in Arnsberg won the German Daycare Center Award. You can learn more about this in a video sequence under the following link:
