At COFACE Families Europe, we believe in the power of inclusive play. As symbolised by our Toys and Diversity campaign. Did you know that the right to play is enshrined in Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
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...
On the 11th June 2025 from 16.00-17.30 CET (Brussels time) and on the occasion of the International Day of Play, this webinar will explore how play can help future generations to rebuild connections and restore happiness. Play is a recognised universal right (UNCRC Article 31), but is also a critical pathway to well-being, connection, and creativity. This is especially relevant in our increasingly disconnected and stressful lives.
This recommendations of the EU Alliance for Investing in Children’s (Alliance) focus on consolidating the European Child Guarantee, European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, EU Anti-Poverty Strategy, and the future EU budget (2028-2035). We advocate for a bold, integrated, and adequately funded approach to eradicate child poverty.
COFACE and its member Vaestoliitto (the Family Federation of Finland) brought family organisations and safer internet centres together in Helsinki on 8-9th April for strategic discussions.
COFACE member, the Association of Germany Family organisations, published an open letter on 12th March 2025 together with other organisations, directed at the federal chairpersons, general secretaries and the chairpersons of the parliamentary groups in the Bundestag...
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.
As part of the European Semester, the Joint Employment Report 2025 emphasises that participation in ECEC under three is improving but at a very low pace, calling for renewed efforts in line with the European Child Guarantee, the European Care Strategy and the Council Recommendation on ECEC.
The aim of this working group meeting will be to find intersections between family, education and digital policies, to address key digital challenges for families of today, and to build stronger partnerships between family organisations, Safer Internet Centres and other stakeholders.
In September 2024, The European Child Sexual Abuse Legislation Advocacy Group of which COFACE is member, organised a breakfast in Strasbourg to welcome newly elected MEPs and encourage them to use their position to fight the ongoing Child Sexual Abuse Crisis affecting millions of children across Europe.
This expert meeting will use the integrated family policy framework created by the European Observatory on Family Policy to look more closely at the impact of services on children and their families, linking the implementation of the European Child Guarantee recommendation to the local level.
Ethnic segregation is a widespread and systematic practice in many European countries. These practices are illegal yet continue to shape the lives of children and families across Europe. Our rights to education, housing, and health, ostensibly enjoyed by us all, remain divided along ethnic lines. For many Roma, their enjoyment of these rights is severely limited, often with the tacit support of the state.
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.
On the 20th of December 2023, the European Commission and the European Council reached a long-sought political agreement on the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. While the Commission described the agreement as ‘historic’, ivil society has widely criticised the Pact for its transgressions on fundamental rights, including providing for the detainment of children.
The Council of the European Union approved the European Child Guarantee (ECG) to address and combat child poverty and exclusion (Council of the European Union, 2021). This report by Eurofound provides knowledge and information about the workforce relevant to ECG and to support Member States in implementing the ECG and reporting on the implementation of national action plans.
In early February, the Commission adopted a proposal to update the criminal law rules on child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. Child sexual abuse is a heinous crime which has evolved significantly over the past years.
Content warning: this article includes material about child sexual abuse that some people might find confronting.
In the 17 seconds you have taken to read this far, footage or images of at least 34 children being abused have been uploaded onto the world wide web. 2 per second. This is the rate of appearance of the kind of material Apple is wilfully failing to detect.
This online expert meeting will bring together speakers from the EU institutions, and ministries working on the Child Guarantee and COFACE member organisations, in order to discuss tools for monitoring and evaluation of Child Guarantee implementation.
This breakfast byte webinar is being organised in the run-up to the 2023 UNESCO international day against bullying, as a contribution to awareness-raising and capacity-building around the topic of bullying.
This public study session organised by the European Expert Group on the transition from institutional to community-based care. It aims to bring together professionals, persons concerned by deinstitutionalisation, their families and representative organisations to discuss the shift toward meaningful inclusion in the community.
With a recent open letter addressed to Members of the European Parliament and Representatives of Member States in the Council of the EU, leading experts from around the world, among which COFACE Director Elizabeth Gosme, urge support for the Commission’s proposal.
In July 2023, the European Commission released results of the latest Flash Eurobarometer survey on the protection of children against online sexual abuse.
The CSA regulation was proposed in May 2022 aiming to better regulate risk assessments and detection of CSA online, imposing different obligations on tech industries, and also setting up an EU centre responsible for the monitoring and implementation of the regulation.
The online exchange for COFACE and COFACE Disability members will especially focus on child-staff ratio in ECEC as a primary driver for child well-being and family engagement.
The parent-child relationship has changed significantly in the last two decades with the advent of the digital age, even more since the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, and the general perception is that technology has caused a...
On the 15th of December 2020, the European Commission published an initial proposal for a Regulation entitled the “Digital Services Act”. COFACE Families Europe has been following the development of this piece of legislation from the start.
All-day care at that age can positively impact parents and children. However, it is not only the existence of (all-day) childcare and schooling that is crucial, but also its content and quality.
it might be useful to stop treating digital policy as a stand-alone field. Digital issues encompass educational policy, (mental)health policy, social policy, cultural policy, judicial policy, youth policy, and much more.
Communication with deaf people who are ill or in poor health is also one of our priorities during this health emergency.
Families around Europe live the same difficulties. They should unite in a same demand: parental leave for working parents during the confinement.
Never before, have I experienced a situation where human behaviour is so greatly affected that it results in feelings of anxiety isolation and uncertainty everywhere.
