The family is the smallest system in European society, the starting point for democracy building and social change, and therefore deserves special support. We know from our previous project that families across Europe are in conflict about similar issues, that almost everyone is "stuck" in the same places. There we have exchanged ideas in a consortium of DE, AT, BG, ES and GR, collected the results and prepared them for publication. In "Europarents 2020" we will be building on these results: we will first carry out a survey in order to be able to orientate our further steps exactly to the needs of parents. We will then work together to develop a game that facilitates and stimulates communication on difficult issues in families. Experience shows that many parents are already relieved when they realize that they are not alone with their problems. With the game to be developed, they can not only get a feeling for the fact that some topics affect families throughout Europe, but also come into direct contact with approaches from other countries and can reflect on them in a playful way. Furthermore, the needs analysis, the further exchange and the joint development of the game will lead to an additional professionalisation of our organisations. One target group are the employees of the organisations who, through their work and finally through the distribution of the game in the vicinity of the organisation, will carry the results into the target group of parents and families. In this way, not only the individual organisations benefit from the European exchange, but also the families can get a feeling that other people in Europe are similar to themselves, a feeling for the European community, and at the same time find new solutions for family conflicts. In previous projects in which the individual organisations have worked together, everyone had the impression that "Europe works best on a small scale" - direct human contact, and, where this is not possible, the knowledge that families are similar throughout Europe, leads to mutual understanding and sympathy across national borders, which nowadays are threatening to become stronger again.
The main goal of the project was to develop a game that facilitates and stimulates communication about difficult topics in the family and to deal with them in a low-threshold way. In doing so, we wanted to orientate ourselves on the conflict topics that are significant for families in the participating European countries. In previous projects in which the individual organisations have worked together, everyone had the impression that "Europe works best on a small scale" - direct human contact and, where this is not possible, the knowledge that families are similar throughout Europe and get into conflicts in the same places, leads to mutual understanding and sympathy across national borders, which nowadays threaten to become entrenched again. In addition, through the exchange and the joint development of the game, a further professionalisation of our organisations could be achieved. We wanted not only the individual organisations to benefit from the European exchange, but also the families to get a feeling for the fact that other people in Europe feel the same way as they do, a feeling for the European community, and at the same time to find new ways of solving family conflicts.
From our counselling and education work, we know that families often seek help with similar issues: For example, many find it difficult to talk constructively about topics such as "reconciling job and family", (media) education or dealing with money. In the previous project "Europarents" we found that this is true all over Europe. The teams of the participating institutions therefore wanted a common approach in order to be able to give families in Europe low-threshold access to conflict-related topics. In the survey conducted, parents were able to indicate which issues have already led to conflicts in the family, how often they occur and what could help to resolve them constructively. Experience shows that many parents are relieved when they realise that they are not alone with their problems. With the game "familytime" they can not only get a feeling for the fact that some issues affect families all over Europe, but also reflect on them in a playful way. The needs of the partner organisations were to find further access to parental work, to professionalise the counselling and education staff and to strengthen and expand their own network.