The COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for many families: in addition to health and economic issues, policy measures such as lockdowns, school closures and teleworking from home out considerable stress on families. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted immediate needs such as regarding financial resources or education supports for many vulnerable families who are likely to be most affected by the long-term economic, educational, health, and well-being consequences of the pandemic and Family services can play a key role in helping families cope with this situation. In that sense, the pandemic underscores previously existing challenges for family support services as identified in the new OECD study on Family Support Services across the OECD.

March 2021: New OECD study "Looking beyond COVID-19: Strengthening the role of Family Support Services":

• Policy Brief [pdf, 20-page]
• Key points  [pdf, 5-page]
• Full report [SEM Working paper] and Annexes
  
• Country notes for selected OECD countries  [pdf, 2-page]:  Australia - Canada - Germany - Ireland  - Japan

• Launch Webinar on Tuesday 30 March 2021: 
  This 2-hour webinar launched a new OECD study on family supports, presenting the overall conclusions of the study, and inviting reactions from different world regions. Participants from across Europe and beyond were invited to tune in and reflect together on how to operationalise the findings to boost the effectiveness of two-generation family support services.

• Programme: English - Español - Who's who?
• Full Replay
• Overview of the OECD study findings Olivier Thévenon, OECD [Presentation] [Replay]
• Reactions, from:
  • Andrea Torres, Programme Director, Bernard van Leer Foundation
  • Petra Mackroth, Director, Ministry for social and family affairs, Germany 
  • Dr Alina Turner, Co-President at HelpSeeker, and Fellow at the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, Canada.

Key OECD resources:

• Delivering evidence based services for all vulnerable families (Working paper - July 2020)
• Securing the Recovery, Ambition and Resilience for the Well-Being of Children in the post-Covid-19 Decade 
• Combatting COVID-19's effect on children
• OECD work on Families and children
• OECD Family Database
• OECD Child Well-Being Portal

Other resources:

• Bernard van Leer Foundation 
• COFACE Families Europe
• Helpseeker Technologies
• Bringing it All Together: Integrating Services to Address Homelessness
• Making Prevention Work (Preventive Structures and Policies For Children, Youth and Families, Bertelmann Stiftung) (Augus

With the support of:

‌

 

• ‌  Follow us on Twitter @OECD_Social