Governance and Incentive Structures to Promote Municipal Prevention Programs for Children and Youth in European Comparison

Short description

The overall project analyzed the communal preconditions for preventive measures in municipalities in various European countries and compared these preconditions systematically. Case studies on several countries and a comparative study examined the factors political will, capacities and skills of local actors as well as the financial situation in municipalities to gauge their effects on communal preventive policies for children and youth.

The project’s central questions were:

1. How do individual countries define prevention and which groups do they target?

2. Which interventions reach families seeking social assistance or families in critical situations?

3. Which structures in the health, education, parenting, and social sector increase the commitment to implement communal prevention measures for children and youth?

4. Which institutions implement preventive measures, which state level are they located at and how do they coordinate?

5. Through which laws, incentive structures, information and comparisons does the national level control preventive activities in municipalities?

6. Which funding is available to municipalities to shape prevention chains?

7. Which lessons can be applied to the conditions in Germany?

The case study on France (pdf 4 Mb) was conducted under the direction of Dr. Renate Reiter (FernUniversität in Hagen). Responsibility for the case studies on Austria and the Netherlands as well as the comparative European study lay with the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the German Research Institute for Public Administration Speyer, which also led the overall project.