Parents of children with disabilities without allowance - The Swedish Social Insurance Agency's waiting times create a "gap"

Parents who care for children who have disabilities or long-term illnesses can receive contributions from the Social Insurance Office. But on January 1, 2019, a reform was implemented in which the care allowance was replaced by the nursing allowance and additional expenses reimbursement - now the parents have to reapply for their contributions.

More than 37,000 parents are now in line for the new nursing allowance. Some of them still have payments from the old health care allowance, as their reimbursement period is not over yet, and others are seeking the reimbursement for the first time.

But there is a large group of parents who had a care allowance before the reform but who have now fallen into a gap waiting for their new applications to be processed. This is a total of 10,120 parents, who now receive none of the grants, figures that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency has produced on behalf of SVT.

Many have also waited a long time. In all counties there are parents who have been waiting for over a year.

"I think it's something of a scandal," says Anki Sandberg, chairman of the Swedish National Attention Association, an organization for people who have neuropsychiatric disabilities and their relatives, and where many members have health benefits.

Right now, a bill is being prepared to temporarily extend the payments of the old care allowance to avoid any gap between the payments. Anki Sandberg welcomes the proposal but thinks it will not solve the whole problem.

- It does not help anyone who is applying for a nursing grant for the first time, she says.

See SVT's reporter Elin Schwartz explain the statistics and hear Anki Sandberg tell us why she thinks the parents are left in the knit, in the clip above.