Mayor Frank Klingebiel's strategic goal of making Salzgitter one of the most child- and family-friendly cities and the initial results of his work in this area to date were highly praised during a two-day meeting of a comparative group of ten cities from Germany and Austria organized by the Kommunale Gemeinschaftsstelle für Verwaltungsmanagement (KGSt) at the Hotel am See.
The coordinator of the comparison group, Thomas Wick from the KGSt, attested that Salzgitter has a "clear target structure that is being put into practice". "Great achievements" had already been made in the short period of time required to become a child and family-friendly learning city at the end of 2006. Salzgitter is now beginning to "reap the first fruits".
This is only possible thanks to stringent administrative management, which is supported by the Council. Especially in periods of low tax revenues, it is important to set priorities, which Salzgitter is doing in a remarkable way, said Wick. The cities of Bottrop, Erlangen, Hamm, Kassel, Kiel, Paderborn, Recklinghausen, Remscheid and Innsbruck participate in the KGSt comparison ring "Family-friendly city".
The head of the children, youth and family department, Dr. Roswitha Krum, and the city's children and family officer, Sylvia Fiedler, did not deny that participation in the comparison ring from 2005 onwards had been a difficult start because Salzgitter had tended to find itself in the lower ranks. In the meantime, the city is in the middle to top range. In this context, Dr. Krum mentioned language support at pre-school age, the number of school leavers without a school-leaving certificate had decreased and the number of day-care places had been increased. The city had always earned top marks for its playgrounds, where the new pirate camp on Salzgittersee had gained national acceptance, and it was a leader in open youth work.
Dr. Krum and Fiedler also recalled the family-friendly Baulandförderung, projects against truancy, the introduction of free school fees for all three years of kindergarten, the adoption of a 73 million euro school renovation program for the next ten years, the design of a new trend-setting youth and sports promotion program and the launch of the project Berufsorientierung und Nachwuchssicherung (BONA SZ) in technical and scientific professions.
At the opening of the conference and during a concluding press conference, City Councillor Ekkehard Grunwald emphasized that the quality of the work of the comparative ring does not lie in a ranking, but that key figures should be used to identify paths to the goal and to find transferable solutions. A key point of consideration is the family migration balance. Compared to 2006, a clear slowdown in the population decline is discernible.
At the end of 2008, the city had registered its lowest loss of population since 2001, with a drop of 963 inhabitants. At the same time, 11,130 children between the ages of 0 and 12 were registered; by August 10, 2009, 11,647 had already been registered, meaning that 517 more children had moved to or been born in Salzgitter. Grunwald: "The sum of child- and family-friendly offers could be decisive for this. After all, the average number of births per woman, the fertility rate, is 1.51, which is above the average of 1.31 in the comparative ring."