We are glad to announce our new working paper which is charged with road-testing a range of research informed policy proposals that are workable and the cost and roll-out conditions of which are known. This working paper builds upon the work of the analysis of A Selection of Family Policies from the Perspective of Resilience, where five areas of policy were considered vital [1]. Simultaneously, the findings showed that most countries do not have integrated a family resilience perspective which often results in inconsistent policies. This could, in turn, lead to families facing trade-offs or being excluded from policies, especially those that differ from the two-parent, nuclear family model.
This working paper is therefore tasked with considering possible policy reforms to respond to this state of play and identifying the conditions under which existing systems could be reformed. It aims to do so by firstly, developing a conceptual framework; secondly, by reviewing at both EU and national levels the relevant policy positions; and thirdly, to lay the foundation for a set of policy principles aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of policies in supporting family resilience. The three overarching goals sought to be achieved through these specific policy principles are: better income support for families with children – with a particular concern for low-resourced families-, as well as closing the childcare gap and, thirdly, putting in place a comprehensive network of family support services.
The report is an outcome of a multi-faceted and collaborative process over a 12-month period from March 2024 to February 2025. These included extensive comparative research of country-level and EU analysis of a set of policies, coupled with the feedback received from the three sessions of the project’s Policy Lab Stakeholder Panels between March 2024 and January 2025 where the policy proposals and principles were road-tested directly with key stakeholders from national family organisations and EU policy experts.
To complement this work, three EU initiatives are considered from the perspective of family resilience and reviewed through the three critical criteria developed for the policy analysis in the project overall, namely: inclusiveness, flexibility, and complementarity of the policies. The three initiatives interrogated are the Work-Life Balance Directive, the European Child Guarantee and the European Care Strategy. The analysis in the six countries as well as the EU policies show two blind spots from the perspective of how these policies view and support families’ needs, namely, gaps, rigidity or narrowness from how well policy aligns with the general nature of family life, which the rEUsilience project has continually emphasised as involving transitions such as between paid work and care being normal. Secondly, policies do not go far enough to recognise the constraints faced by low-resourced families, especially those confronted with a situation of low income, illness or disability on the part of a child or children and a situation when only one parent is present.
To help shape policy reform, we propose 15 policy principles as a guide for countries and international institutions to achieve better resilience on the part of families, with the principles related to coverage (endorsing a universal approach), adequacy (in terms of amount and sufficiency), inclusion (recognition of additional need) and the absence of gaps. The rationale for offering general policy principles as guidelines taps into the caution to generalise findings due to the reality of cross-country variation regarding the selected policy fields. The aim of the policy principles is to set out a roadmap or norms that countries should seek to achieve for better supporting families, starting from where they are.
To read the full working paper and learn more about our proposed Policy Principles, see here.
[1] These were: parenting-related leaves, early childhood education and care (ECEC), provisions for lone-parent families, those for families coping with a disability or illness on the part of a child and those for families with a migration background adjusting to or integrating into the new country.