The competent handling of money has become an important key qualification for a successful lifestyle. Preventive services have so far been aimed primarily at children, young people and people just starting out in their careers. Parents and families are rarely addressed directly and, as previous experience has repeatedly shown, are difficult to reach as a new target group.

Family centers with their new structure create a promising low-threshold access for families in the social area. In addition to childcare, they offer families a variety of counseling and educational services. To this end, they cooperate with external partners. The project uses this access route to explore the opportunities for counseling and education around the topic of financial literacy in family centers.

In cooperation with the family centers and with the other stakeholders involved, the project examines how offers to strengthen financial literacy can be implemented in family centers and whether parents are reached in this way.

Specifically, this means:

• to explore the possibilities for education and counseling around the topic of financial literacy
  in family centers,
• to identify, further develop and test suitable offers,
• testing in practical application how to reach parents in a preventive way, and
• to examine whether such services can be established in the family center on a permanent basis
  .

The project is aimed at family centers and competent contacts who can provide families with neutral information and advice.

Project participants

• Family centers and their staff
• possible cooperation partners in the social area of the family centers: debt counseling, consumer counseling, family education, etc.
• supraregional associations and organizations with offers on the topic
• Youth welfare offices, municipal decision-makers

The project is being carried out at six project locations throughout the country. When selecting the participating family centers, different municipal conditions and the diversification of the sponsors were deliberately taken into account with the aim of reaching families in different life situations.

• Hochsauerlandkreis
• City of Essen
• Kleve district
• City of Cologne
• Minden-Lübbecke district
• Recklinghausen district

The project is sponsored for two years by the Ministry of Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Preparatory phase

• 08. 2008 to 01. 2009
  Initiation of topic-related exchange at local level and networking of local cooperation partners, information on approaches, training of educators

Practical phase

• 02. 2009 to 02. 2010
  Planning and practical testing of offers to promote financial literacy in the family centers.

Follow-up phase

• 03. 2009 to 12. 2010
  Evaluation of the experiences and revision of the action plans, especially with regard to the content and methodology and possible networking structures and financing models.

Strengthening the financial literacy of families means approaching the topic in different ways. Strengthening financial literacy is understood to mean teaching basic financial knowledge as well as strengthening general consumption skills and household and supply skills. In particular, we want to focus on and promote the everyday skills that are typical in the family phase of life. The definition we have chosen thus corresponds to the view of the nationwide prevention network Financial Literacy.

The basis for the scientific monitoring is the good practice approach as a research strategy. Here, success criteria are identified and further developed by systematically observing examples of good practice. This results in a close connection of theory and practice elements. The chosen development approach is divided into four sub-steps:
win interested project partners in the districts, municipalities, institutions and cooperation partners and initiate the topic-related exchange on a local level, research approaches to action and supra-regional offers and train the employees of the family centers, plan and practically test offers in the family centers, document and evaluate the experiences, derive recommendations for action and check which factors and approaches work well and how they can be passed on to other institutions.

The project's measures include:

• Round tables - these promote exchange and communication among project participants at the community level.
• Further training - the employees are qualified in introductory and in-depth further training accompanying the project.
• Information and consultation - the family centers are accompanied in an advisory capacity, and the exchange of experience is supported.
• Documentation - the services offered in the family centers are documented and the experiences evaluated.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the establishment of the Financial Literacy Network three years ago has given rise to many initiatives to promote financial literacy. Two conferences held by the Ministry of Consumer Protection on the topic of "Talking openly about money" in 2007 and 2008 have already met with a great response from educators. They led to the realization that many educators are interested in the topic, but would like support in implementing it.

Further information on the "Financial Literacy Network" can be found in the download section of the info box at the top right.

A competition also held jointly in 2007/ 2008 by the LBS Young Families Initiative, the MUNLV and the Hochschule Niederrhein documented the first examples of good practice.

Experience to date has shown that such approaches certainly fit into the range of services offered by the family center, but that it is necessary to offer the practice further support for this path. As a result, the MUNLV decided to support this project in a two-year pilot project.