Background
Family resilience centres on families’ capacities to engage in family life, which involves caregiving, especially for children, and manage the transitions involved in moving from one stage of family life to another and in engaging in paid work without incurring major risk or trade-off. The avoidance of poverty and social exclusion is one important risk in this context but family well-being in general, and especially the capacity to engage in family life, are also central.
The rEUsilience research project has worked with the notion of low resources (rather than poverty). This is for several reasons. It allows to countenance, first, a broad set of resources as being necessary for family life and, second, that families face difficulties that may originate in factors other than low income (although they may be associated with income and lead to income shortages). We refer here especially to family composition and the extent to which families have heavy caring-related responsibilities. The former places the spotlight on parents raising children alone and those with more than two children while the latter highlights families coping with illness, disability or developmental difficulties (hence also including care for adults).
At a time when the European Union is reviewing its Action Plan for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, this offers an opportunity to set new priorities and intensify efforts to support resilience of families. Namely through actions which aim to strengthen families (all types without discrimination) in Europe by providing comprehensive, accessible, and equitable support systems that enhance the quality of life, promote gender equality, and foster child development and family wellbeing.
The research of rEUsilience indicates the priority should be to put in place a good system of support for families which should operate to the highest standards regarding making full information available, creating a system of support that is easy to access and is person-centred. The proposals have been devised cognisant of the wide variation across the rEUsilience and other European countries. This makes reform and transition much more onerous for some countries than others.
The three main suggested overarching policy aims as a guide for countries and international institutions to achieve better resilience on the part of families are the following:
- Better income support for families with children with a particular concern for low-resourced families;
- Closing the childcare gap, arising following the birth of a child, when well-paid parental leave has been exhausted, but access to state-supported full-time ECEC is not yet available.
- Putting in place a comprehensive set of family support services.
For each of these three areas, policy principles are offered as a guide for countries and international institutions to reshape policy to achieve better resilience on the part of families. They relate to coverage (endorsing a universal approach), adequacy (in terms of amount and sufficiency), inclusion (recognition of additional need) and the absence of gaps. The underlying thinking is that such policy principles set out guidelines or norms that countries should seek to achieve, starting from where they are and in accordance with their national social welfare traditions.
15 Policy priorities for family resilience
Principles for Better Income Support for Families with Children
- Child-related Income Support Should Be Available on a Universal Basis to All Families with Children
- The Child-related Income Support Should Grant an Adequate Level of Support
- The Child-related Income Support Should Operate on a Principle of Recognising the Additional Needs of Some Families
- Recognition of the Additional Costs of Transitions in Families Should Be Built into the Child-related Income Support
Principles for Closing the Childcare Gap
- Paid Statutory Leave Should Be Universal for All Parents
- Well-paid Leave Should Be Accepted as a Principle for all Parenting-related Leaves
- Equality among Families Should be Accepted as a Principle especially by Recognising the Additional Needs of Some Families
- Gender Equality Should Remain a Core Principle of Parenting-related Leaves
- The Right and Entitlement to ECEC Should Be Universal for all Children
- There Should Be No Gap between the End of Well-paid, Parenting-related Leaves and the Onset of the Child’s Right to ECEC
- Some Families have Additional Needs regarding ECEC and Should Be Supported
- ECEC Should be Governed by a Principle of Flexibility
Principles for Putting in Place Comprehensive Family Support Services
- Family Support Services Should Be Universally Available and Range from General to Highly specialised Support
- There Should Be a National-level Framework for Family Support Services Premised on Local level Provision
- Family Support Services Should Be Guided by a Holistic Approach
