Würzburg. In an open letter, the social officers of the Bavarian cities of Würzburg, Nuremberg, Augsburg and Munich call on the Bavarian state government to make all offers of open youth work available as extracurricular educational offers to young people who have tested negative.
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Underage schoolchildren in Bavaria are currently given access to gastronomy, accommodation, as well as sporting, musical and acting activities if they are tested regularly, the letter continues. The Bavarian state government has continued and extended the exception for this group of people – from the 2G and 2Gplus requirements that usually apply in these areas. However, it still does not apply to pupils over the age of 18 and also not to the offers and facilities of open child and youth work.
This means that preventive work in youth centers or leisure facilities is practically no longer possible. Tutoring offers initiated by youth work are also affected: as extracurricular educational offers in youth centers, they are still only permitted under 2G requirements.
The social officers argue that open youth work is a mandatory task of the municipalities and part of a functioning community. It offers young people a contact point for their leisure time and reaches socially disadvantaged young people who simply do not want to and cannot take advantage of regular offers and often live in stressed family situations.
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The open youth work is therefore a low-threshold offer of help for people “who can be vaccinated last and who had to give up first in the pandemic”. This offer as well as positive influence was missing in the public or private space, where the unvaccinated young people would instead go and continue to meet without protection and without control. According to the current Infection Protection Measures Ordinance, underage schoolchildren could, for example, do sports together without a mask in the sports club, but they, like unvaccinated and young people over 18 years of age, were not allowed to enter the youth center or youth club.
Because unvaccinated young people can no longer come to the youth club or youth center, they lose almost all of their connection to their social network, educators can no longer exert any influence and valuable relationships that have been built up over the years are lost week after week. Since the unvaccinated can no longer take advantage of tutoring offers, this not only drives social injustice, but also educational inequality. With 2G in youth work facilities, no educational work can be carried out on young people who have not yet been vaccinated in order to motivate undecided young people and their families to vaccinate against the corona virus.
“Many of our young visitors would like to be vaccinated, but cannot convince their parents to take them to the vaccination center or to the doctor.” Unequal treatment”. Due to the stress on families caused by the pandemic, the pressure on young people and the recurring infection-related restrictions on social contacts, young people are increasingly exposed to psychological stress. dr Hülya Düber, social affairs officer for the city of Würzburg, is alarmed: “Even now, surveys show that young people are massively burdened by the restrictions. These include depression, anxiety symptoms and mental health problems. As a result, the youth welfare offices are observing an increase, for example, in endangering oneself and others and, more and more often, people fleeing into conspiracy ideologies.”
“In our opinion, 3G instead of 2G in the field of open youth work is necessary in order to prevent social injustices among young people that are constantly arising. Access to preventive and integrative offers must not be made dependent on a vaccination status determined by parents. Children, adolescents and young adults must no longer be the losers of the pandemic measures,” said the four social officers. pm
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