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absence certificate was required in nearly all the applications. The absence
certificate was abolished in January 2013. Usually about 5 per cent of the
applications are selected for monitoring. However, during some months,
usually in the summer when the use of the benefit decreases, no
applications have been selected for monitoring (see figure 1 for details).
The parent is contacted only when the information from the employer, day
care or school differs from the information the parent has given on the
application. Hence, the parents are often only aware of being monitored
when some error has been detected in the application. It is also possible
that the employer, the day care or the school informs the parent about the
monitoring. We have no information on how often this occurs.
It should also be stressed that by far all discrepancies that are discovered
in the monitoring are conscious misuse and many discrepancies are not
even real errors. In 7 per cent of the monitored applications some type
of error or discrepancy is detected. It should also be noted that the
monitoring aims to detect whether the parent has worked or the child has
been present at child care or school, not to detect other possible types of
misuse. For example it is not possible to detect if a parent is staying at
home with a healthy child a few days. During the first week of the benefit
spell no medical certificate on the child’s health status is required. The
same rule applies also for receiving sickness benefits. However in the
sickness insurance program the employer pays the sickness benefits the
first fourteen days and there is one waiting day before receiving the
compensation.