home und care

Description

• Programme: ERDF - Urban Innovative Actions (UIA)
• Funding amount: €5 million for Landshut  
• Funding period: 09/2019 – 07/2023
• Coordinator: Dr Matthias Kurbel, City of Landshut, Unit 4
• Internet: www.homeandcare.eu / www.uia-initiative.eu/en/uia-cities/landshut

Project "home and care" - an innovative living, care and working concept to reduce the poverty risk among single parents and their children

According to a study from the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the risk of poverty for children with single parents is much higher than for other children, as single mothers and fathers are rarely able to work full-time due to a lack of care facilities. Healthcare and nursing jobs in particular, which require a special flexibility with time, present single parents with challenges that are difficult to overcome. At the same time, there is a massive lack of people working in these occupations. The EU-funded project “home and care” from the city of Landshut is now seeking to take on this problem with an innovative living concept.

Healthcare, nursing, and child-raising professions are essential for the cohesion of our society. Unfortunately, they are not very popular: They are not only paid poorly, but they are also very demanding. Since 2008, care and child-raising professions have held the top spot in the incapacity for work due to mental illnesses such as burnout. In addition, the early and late shifts in these occupations conflict with the opening times of daycare facilities, which makes it a daily struggle to coordinate a child's care. Single adults have it particularly hard here. In addition to caring for their own children, they have to take on the rapidly growing challenges of the professional world, in particular with regard to time flexibility. While the number of single parents in Germany and Europe is increasing constantly - today, every fifth parent is a single parent - there is a striking lack of people working in the aforementioned professions. At the same time, the low wages and difficulty of working full-time are leading to a high risk of poverty for single parents and their children.

The home and care project, which the city of Landshut initiated with six local partners, seeks to break this cycle by creating a triad of work, childcare, and living. The project will allow single parents working in healthcare and nursing professions to live door to door with single parents working in childcare. The goal is to create a new form of flexible childcare that puts the needs of children first while also offering single parents the opportunity to seek further education or a full-time position. The project combines and coordinates the interests of children, single parents, care workers, and employers and will will enable a new form of flexible child care unmatched by regular child day care.

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