The childcare gap remains one of the most pressing challenges facing new parents across Europe today. This gap arises following the birth of a child, when well-paid parental leave has been exhausted, but access to state-supported full-time Early Childhood Education and Care is not yet available. Read this new Factsheet produced by the European Observatory on Family Policy.
COFACE Families Europe adopted 14 Digitalisation principles for creating a better Internet and web for all.
In October 2024, COFACE co-hosted a European expert meeting in Berlin on the role of local prevention systems for implementing the European Child Guarantee. Click here to see the key findings.
EU policy-makers must ensure that all families are given support and guidance to access and navigate the digital environment in a meaningful way. This includes strong legal frameworks as well as strong and “low-threshold” evidence-based support and prevention measures for families. COFACE has produced a policy brief highlighting the importance of digital technologies for children and their families, and analysing whether existing and currently debated EU frameworks aimed at ensuring safe and empowering digital experiences for children integrate a families perspective.
In 2019, COFACE Families Europe mobilised voters locally through its member organisations (representing families of all types, without discrimination). These recommendations are addressed at EU-level policymakers in the European Commission, European Parliament and Council of the EU, from whom we expect joint leadership to ensure tangible results for Europe’s citizens. It is on this basis that we have assessed the European Union's work from 2019 to 2024, and how it contributes to achieving eight positive outcomes for families of today.
In October 2023, COFACE and UNAF Spain co-hosted a European expert meeting on family diversity and making social rights accessible to all types of families. The context is one of fast-paced changes in labour markets and income security to which families have to...
Principle 18 of the European Pillar of Social Rights stresses: the right to affordable long-term care services of good quality, in particular homecare and community-based services. Since its adoption in 2017, the European Union has been looking more intensively at the topic of Long-Term Care (LTC), most notably with the adoption in 2022 of the European Care Strategy and the Council Recommendation on Long-Term Care. In this important time, COFACE Disability Platform launch this thematic note to spark the debate on the diversity of family carers. While the lion’s share of family carers are currently of working age and need urgent actions to support them.
Families with young children have complex necessities in the period before the start of compulsory schooling. Often, these needs cannot be reduced to educational, healthcare or caregiving demands alone.This comparative report aims to investigate possible responses to multisectoral needs of households by providing an overview of the current alignment and coordination between complementary services and policy areas in four European countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, and Poland) and the Belgian region of Flanders.
The EU and its governments must act swiftly for a families-sensitive approach to energy policy and planning. This includes integrated policy solutions that combine energy and social policies - these are vital in addressing the multifaceted nature of energy poverty....
