Protection of children and adolescents

"Child and youth protection" is understood to mean a variety of regulations and measures that help to protect children and adolescents from dangers to their well-being. Young people are entitled to healthy mental, physical and psychological development, as well as protection from physical and emotional neglect, maltreatment and sexual abuse.

Possible dangers are present in a wide variety of areas of life, such as alcohol, tobacco and drug consumption, sects and psychogroups, extremism in any form and much more. Mental health problems and illnesses among children and adolescents have also increased significantly as a result of increasingly uncertain living conditions and strong pressure to perform. Another thing to do is to prevent violence between children and adolescents, such as bullying and happy slapping.

Due to the rapid technical development of our time, dangers in the context of media use are also increasing, starting with excessive consumption of television, the Internet, game consoles and the like to cyberbullying, illegal downloads and pornographic content.

The Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Equality deals, among other things, with the educational, legal and structural protection of children and young people. In particular, the protection of children and adolescents from violence, neglect and abuse is a high priority. For this reason, numerous support measures are initiated and promoted by the state government. These include counselling centres for children and adolescents, child protection coordination centres and girls' shelters, as well as the training of family midwives and child protection specialists.

The promotion of regionally broadly dispersed preventive services is one of the goals of the educational protection of minors. Public and independent providers of municipal youth welfare perform these tasks in their area of responsibility and are supported by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Equality and the State Office for Social Affairs, Youth and Family within the framework of project funding, counselling and further training.