Acquiring democratic competencies through projects in cooperation between youth welfare services and schools in Germany

This article describes the way in which the theoretical and practical debate on civic education has taken place in Germany as well as the resulting difficulties for comprehensive democratic education. Additionally, this article presents the research results of a mixed-method study (including online surveys, participant observation, and interviews), which show how cooperation projects between youth welfare services and schools give young people the opportunity to acquire a variety of democratic competences. Such approaches can contribute to a promising expansion of efforts in the field of civic education (beyond the school subject of politics) since findings regarding the state of civic education, particularly in schools, can be regarded as disappointing; child and youth welfare services are broadly considered to have the potential for improvement, at least structurally. Up to now, these discourses have been wholly separate from one other.