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The children's and young people's assistance law authoritatively pointed out more clearly, what counselling in educational guidance services offered by the youth welfare can be. Then a difference is to be made between psychotherapy as a free offer made by educational guidance services and psychotherapy as a service offered by the medical care system and financed by the health insurance. Important criteria for discrimination can be deduced from the purposes of the children's an young people's assistance law and from their interpretations. The law demands a stronger pedagogical orientation, and it even demands an orientation towards underprivileged groups dealing with everyday matters. An analysis of the current practice confirms this trend. Meanwhile the educational guidance services have developed an independent methodology. Much more than the therapy offered by the medical care systems this therapy is marked by pragmatic purposes and a generic orientation. This therapy is getting more and more profiled on the basis of the children's and young people's assistance law still is lacking however a theory bringing it forward as well as systematics studies of their effects.

The central question of this article is whether the Law for Children and Youth Aid (Kinder- und Jugendhilfegesetz KJHG) from 1991 is justly accused of being more a Law for Parent Aid than a law in keeping with the times which also does justice to the problems and needs of children. The article especially pursues the question whether the legislator of the KJHG considers the precarious balance of a conflict between parental rights and children's welfare as required by the constitution. Whether the child's welfare is endangered in an individual case and which strategies to limit further dangers are promising can often only be answered in an interdisciplinary manner; competencies from child psychologists and child psychiatrists should be utilized more extensively to determine problems and find decisions in youth care.