Allowance for parents of disabled children in Russia to be almost doubled

Allowance for parents of children with disabilities to be almost doubled

22.02.2019

Maxim Topilin, the Minister for Labour and Social Welfare, announced that from July 1, parents of children with a disability will have their allowance almost doubled.

According to him, the agency has prepared a draft Presidential decree to increase the monthly payment for the care of children with disabilities from 5500 to 10 000 roubles.

At the same time, experts have made it clear that only non-working parents, adoptive parents, guardians and custodians, who are raising and caring for a child with a first group disability or who has had a disability since childhood are eligible for the raise.

“The allowance for caring for a child with a disability is paid out only to a non-working parent,” the president of the Centre for Autism Ekaterina Men wrote on her Facebook. “Not working anywhere, not even a part-time job. If the parent receiving this allowance, for instance, were to write a little article and receive a fee for it, they would immediately lose this allowance. If they were to sew a cushion with a cross and sell it on an online shop, they would immediately be recognised as working and deprived of the allowance. Every attempt by the parent of the disabled child to slightly improve their financial situation through honest work is automatically seen to mean that they are no longer caring for the disabled child. You can’t live off 5000 or 10 000 roubles. That is why those receiving the allowance who don’t want to lose it, but at the same time want to survive and earn a little extra, are just pushed into the shadow economy.”

The organiser of the movement “Raise the LOU allowance”, Svetlana Shtarkova, has previously explained that the parent community proposed that the parents, guardians and custodians should be recognised as working people.

“Caring for a person with a disability is tough mental and physical work, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,”, Svetlana Shtarkova says. “So far, our right to long-term care in the home has not been recognised. This care is provided only in residential conditions: for children in care homes and for adults in psychoneurological facilities. Staff at these institutions receive a salary for this, for the same amount of work which we do at home. So they work, but we at home do not work, although we are doing the exact same thing.”
Source: https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2019/02/22/posobie-povyshenie-invalidnost/

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