10
Objectives
The aim of this report is to examine how the Agency assesses
parental responsibility for Assistance Benefit.
Methods
The report examines the legislation and internal management of
the Agency regarding the assessment of parental responsibility.
Furthermore, case handling is reviewed through interviews with case
officers of four of the Agency’s local offices, and through a study of
all cases where a child of age 0−11 years has applied for Assistance
Benefit for the first time.
Findings
There is no description of how and in which situations the case
officers of the Agency need to document the deduction of normal
parental responsibility in regard to the methods of assessment,
which are part of the guidelines of assessment. Furthermore, the case
officers being interviewed felt that the internal management was
lacking in clarity, and therefore was a weak support in the handling
of cases.
The study of Assistance Benefit cases reveals clear differences in the
assessment of the parental responsibility in the handling of cases. In
some cases a general deduction of time based on the child’s age has
been made, while in some cases deductions have been made for each
type of support. 26 percent of the cases lack an assessment of parental
responsibility.
The interviews with case officers confirm the results from the case
study. Some case officers state that they will make an assessment of
parental responsibility based on their own or colleagues’ experiences
with children, while others use knowledge from the scientific
community to confirm the needs of support that children of a certain
age without disabilities normally have.
Throughout the years, difficulties in the assessment of the parental
responsibility have been ascertained, which could cause a lack of
uniformity in the case handling of Assistance Benefit.
