On the occasion of the World Family Day, ASPE organized a scientific conference on Saturday 21.5.2022 entitled: “The European Child Guarantee recommendation and the International Family Day 2022”.
This year’s International Family Day (International Day of Families | United Nations) theme was Families and Urbanization, a perfect match with ELFAC’s great initiative, the European Network of Family Friendly Cities. Grasping this opportunity, ASPE, as the national coordinator of the Network in Greece, delivered the first speech on this topic.
The 1st session on the World Family Day consisted of these speeches:
- Professor Georgios Pierrakos, “Family and Demographic Policies in times of crisis”.
- Thomas Gianniotis (ASPE VP), “Challenges of urbanization and policies to support families and large families”.
- Dr Vaios Dafoulis (Consultant Psychiatrist, Head of a child psychiatric clinic), “The value of the family in Greek society – Preparing the parents of the 21st century”.
The 2nd session on the European Child Guarantee consisted of the following speeches:
- Artemis Anagnostou-Dedouli (President of the Hellenic Social Solidarity Centre), “The Greek National Action Plan for the prevention and combating of the social exclusion of children”.
- Professor Gabriel Amitsis, “Emblematic initiatives for the social inclusion of children in Greece”.
- Triantafylia Athanasiou (President of the Social Service Workers of Greece), “Child Protection, European Child Guarantee and the challenges for the institutional role of Social Services”.
- Maria Chatzinikolaki (Director of the Union ‘together for the child’), “The situation of children in Greece – The view of civil society”.
The results of the conference, announced with a Press Release, indicate what needs to be done:
- The adoption of strong demographic and family policies will lead to a reduction in child poverty. It is better to increase expenditure on support for the family in general and large families in particular to be increased preventively, rather than to spend it on combating poverty and social exclusion ex post.
- Adoption of a National Demographic Strategy.
- Supporting the family in reducing the cost of raising the child.
- Supporting the mother in accessing the labour market so that all 2 parents work in one family.
- Reconciliation of work and family life.
- Rewarding parenthood – Positive parental models & paradigms to be promoted.
- Childcare and housing care.
ASPE is devoted into cultivating family values in society, producing public dialogue material and doing advocacy work on supporting large families, promoting family positive legislation and spread the word about the happiness of giving birth and raising children.
ASPE, an active member of ELFAC, is open for cooperation in funded projects based on the above principles and has been registered into the European Commission’s portal for Funding & Tender opportunities with PIC number 888387596. For any ideas, proposals and further cooperation, please mail to info@aspe.org.gr
More than 150 people attended the conference plus about officials from the Government, the Prefecture of Attica, the City of Athens and the Christian Orthodox Church of Greece. Overall, it was a very successful event. Noteworthy, that twenty postgraduate students of the University of West Attica participated to the conference.
