Our Aspiration, our Goals and Objectives – What Do We Want?
As a network, the Working Group for Child and Youth Welfare (AGJ) serves as a forum for the ongoing exchange of professional experience, for dialogue on youth policy and expert discussion, for cooperation among its members, and for the representation of shared interests in child and youth welfare as well as child and youth policy. The AGJ’s mission is to connect all areas of activity and specialized fields within child and youth services at the federal level, as well as to establish communication and cooperation with related policy areas.
Based on the guiding principles of communication, competence, and cooperation, the AGJ pursues the following overarching goals:
- Promoting professional communication within child and youth services
- Further development of child and youth welfare at the federal level, as well as in the European and international contexts
- Advocacy for child and youth welfare at the national, European, and international levels
- Provision of services for AGJ members and the child and youth welfare sector
- Serving as an interface between child and youth welfare and other social and political sectors
- Serving as a forum for child and youth policy.
Sub-goals, based on the AGJ’s mission and mandate, are:
- Promoting collaboration (networking) among all federal-level providers of private and public youth welfare services
- Lobbying the legislative and executive branches
- Addressing issues and questions in the practice of child and youth welfare that cut across service providers and areas of activity, relate to the federal, state, and local levels, and are focused on both support and prevention as well as specific at-risk groups
- Bringing together the interests of service providers and staff under the overarching principle of professionalism in child and youth welfare
- Bringing the professional perspectives and unique structure of German child and youth welfare to the European level.
