Bedingungslose ambulante Erziehungshilfen

“Unconditional youth welfare” is the name for an open political reform and socio-pedagogical research programme that opposes the stigmatisation of users of educational support services. The programme explores the question of whether it would be desirable and practically feasible if educational support services were attractive and universally accessible to all children, young people and their parents, regardless of the existence of an educational need. The article develops the thesis that outpatient educational support can only be considered “unconditional” in the socio-pedagogical sense if (at least) three criteria are met: (1) the assistance must have a low threshold in terms of eligibility requirements and (2) be available without a targeted needs assessment by the youth welfare office. A prerequisite is (3) a youth welfare system that respects the parents’ self-respect by ensuring that there is no longer any reason to fear that their child could be “taken away” from them, as in the case of an external placement it would be plausibly deniable that the child no longer lives at home due to a parenting deficit (plausible deniability). It is argued that the first criterion can already be considered fulfilled and the second criterion could be implemented in a similar way to educational counselling. In this sense, outpatient educational assistance is de facto already well on the way to be an unconditional, universalist family service.