Kostelka: Fixing of nursering rates for minors - new developments?
Fixing of nursering rates for minors- new developments?
ORF-Series "Bürgeranwalt" (“Advocate for People”) – Broadcast of February 9th, 2008
Since 1999 the Ombudsman has regularly reported complaints to the Austrian regional parliaments and the two chambers of the Austrian Federal Parliament (Nationalrat and Bundesrat) concerning shortcomings with the determination of nursering rates for severely disabled minors. During the broadcast of February 9th Ombudsman Peter Kostelka presented two examples in the field of the determination of the necessary nursering demand for minors and again called for federally wide applicable coherent classification statutes which better fit to the specific needs of disabled children.
According to the Austrian Nursering Law only the additional time used for nursering a disabled person in comparison to nursering a healthy child is taken into consideration. The responsible experts for determinating the additional nursering demand are often not accurate enough in their expertises and do not consider the special nursering-situation in question. Additional problems have risen after the jurisdiction has become very casuistic in the field, which makes it difficult even for pediatrics to determine the real nursering demand. Further critics concern the fact that necessary therapies which are unpredictable, have to be learned and used by parents without endangering the survival of severely disabled children (e.g. use of respiration machine; vaccuming of mucus; tube feeding) do not constitute additional nursering demand.
Mentioning the insufficiently detailed opinions of experts of the regional governments and the long lasting procedures before the authorities and courts Mr. Kostelka asked for new measures which comply with the present jurisdiction and address the real need of disabled children. For this purpose a rapid amendment of the Federal Law concerning Nursering and the Regional Laws with its Nursering regulations had to be implemented.
As announced by the representative of Styria Dr. Flecker in the broadcast "Bürgeranwalt" at Sept. 22nd 2007 the Regional Government amended the classification regulation belonging to the Regional Nursering Law taking more into consideration the special needs of severely disabled children.
In order to cover the additional nursering demand for disabled children up to the age of five it is now possible to calculate 75 additional hours separately (from the age of 5 to the age of 15 30 hours). The determination of the additional nursering demand with procedures which are non-appealable and in which the decision differs more than two grades from the opinion of an expert, the determination of the additional demand is carried out by the authority having retroacting effect of three years maximum. According to this new regulation all the complaints concerning Styria could be solved in a satisfying manner for the parents.
A leading official of the Ministry for Social Affairs and Consumer interests affirmed the willingness of the Federal Administration to create uniform regulations on a federal level concerning the classification of the nursering demand in cooperation with the governaments of the Federal States. Styria so far also had the chair of a working group dealing with the issue. No results could unfortunately be presented to this point of time.
Dr. Kostelka expressed his full understanding for parents which have to take care of their disabled children around the clock but cannot understand that it first of all depends on their residence and on the authorities´ mood and experts how much nursering subsidies they get but not on the severity of the child´s disability.
The representative of the Ministry for Social Affairs referred to the meeting of the responsible Representatives for Social Affairs. There further details of the Criteria-concerning nursering demand will be clarified.
The Ombudsman will carefully observe, whether and how the promised improve-ments will be implemented. In the Ombudsman´s opinion it would be socially and economically appropriate to support these parents who had to change their lives in order to take care of their handicapped children.