FK manager self-critical: "We have failed in our investigation"

SVT Nyheter Öst has followed Martin from Linköping and his struggle to get activity compensation from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency.

He has twice been acquitted in court.

- We have broken the holistic view.

We have missed important details, says Andreas Pettersson, who is area manager at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, among other things with responsibility for activity compensation.

"Deeply unhappy that Martin has been hit"

Martin has a disability and therefore participates in daily activities.

It is an occupation where he receives guidance and support.

But since he received good reviews from a colleague, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency considered that he could take a regular job - and withdrew the compensation.

- It is deeply unfortunate that Martin has been affected.

It does not help Martin, but we have made quite a lot of efforts in the last 1.5 years.

We have built up the competence around certain diagnoses, how should we investigate people who are in daily activities and we have talked a lot about what it means to be in daily activities.

It is not possible to equate with a job, says Andreas Pettersson.

Half of the decisions were left behind

SVT Nyheter Öst examined in June 2021 how common it is for people who have lost their activity compensation to be entitled to court.

Since there are no such statistics, we manually went through almost a thousand judgments from administrative courts throughout Sweden.

The review showed that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency received a lesson from the courts in 23 percent of all appealed cases regarding activity compensation.

The court in Linköping has changed half of the decisions.

So there are hundreds of people who have ended up in the same situation as Martin - and had to wait for several years to get the money they are entitled to.

How do you look at it?

- It is clear that we will take those judgments into account and analyze what it depends on.

This is something we have also done in the past year.

We have received several reports, including reviews from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, which have helped us with the support we need to give to the investigators, says Andreas Pettersson.

Where is the fault, do you think, when it happens in this way, that people get it right in court?

- It is with the Swedish Social Insurance Agency.

We are lacking in our investigation.

We lack the holistic view, in taking in all perspectives.

I think the judgments are clear.

And also previous judgments where it says how we should look at daily activities.

This is something we have worked on a lot over the past year.

Support for investigators and skills development.

So if we do a new review now, then we get a completely different picture?

- I would like to say and hope so.

But there is a certain lag.

We have an investigation time and it takes time before it goes to court.

We are a large organization and everything takes time.

There is absolutely no excuse.

We must make the right decisions and we are obliged to follow the law.

The fault lies solely with us, but we have done a great deal to correct the shortcomings we see.