Caring for family members: ‘I discovered by chance that I was entitled to a salary of 3,000 per month’

Anyone caring for family members is at risk of falling into poverty. The Federal Office for Public Health (BAG) wrote this in a 2020 report. In 2016, around 300,000 people performed unpaid care work – which amounts to a total of 80 million hours, the BAG also notes.

Andrea* from Zurich has a son with a disability. Miro* suffers from an unbalanced translocation. Andrea and her husband only found out he had this genetic disorder when their son was eight months old, because he was not developing normally.

After her maternity leave, Andrea still worked 80 percent. When it became clear that Miro had a disability, Andrea had to reduce her workload to 50 percent, because the older her child got, the more care she needed. Since Miro started school, Andrea has returned to working 60 percent.

Miro is now seven years old and cannot walk, talk or eat properly. His parents give him liquid food, change his diapers and have to carry him often.

“You could say he’s still in the baby development stage. The older he gets, the more time-consuming it becomes to take good care of him,” Andrea explains.

Until Miro was in the second kindergarten, Andrea took care of him for free. The reason for this: Until then, no one had informed Andrea that she was entitled to compensation for the several hours of care work she does every day.

A year ago, when Miro was almost six years old, Andrea heard from the mother of one of Miro’s classmates that she was employed by Spitex to care for her son and was being paid for it. Spitex actually only pays when the child is six years old, but this mother already received wages when her son was only five and a half years old. This example shows that exceptions are possible depending on the restriction level.

But it was not only Andrea who happened to come into contact with this system, the mother of the other child was also not informed of it by an official body: “Our children are sent to nursery school and preschool by a special body. special education. cab. The driver of this disabled van informed her with a flyer that she could receive financial support.”

Andrea then opted for a Spitex and was accepted. For every hour she cares for her son, she now receives 40 francs gross, these costs are reimbursed by her son’s health insurer. At a daily rate of three hours per day, she normally receives a net salary of approximately 3,000 francs.

The first year Andrea was paid for nursing work, she had to train as a nursing assistant with the Swiss Red Cross. If she had not followed this course, the health insurer would no longer reimburse the nursing hours.

The health insurer also regularly carries out clarifications at Andrea’s home, checking whether the care request continues and over what period. Andrea also receives visits from a Spitex employee several times a year. This manages the processes and registrations that require payment.

But Andrea does not receive the same amount every month: “The health insurer does not pay me when the child is in hospital. That is obvious. But I also don’t get paid when my family and I go on vacation. The logic doesn’t quite make sense to me; After all, I also have to take care of my child during the holidays, and the effort is exactly the same.”

Moreover, she only gets paid six days a week because the labor law stipulates that every employee must have at least one day off per week. “I still work seven days a week, but I only get paid six,” says Andrea.

Nevertheless, the fact that Spitex now pays Andrea regularly has made her life easier. Her son had previously received about R2,000 a month in helplessness compensation. For example, Andrea uses this money for Miro’s special food and diapers. She only recently had to buy a nursing bed because he regularly escaped from the normal bed. Costs: 6,000 to 8,000 francs. Andrea says that for such investments it is very useful if she can use money from the Spitex wage or the helplessness allowance.

The Spitex wage gives her security and also compensates for the loss of wages: “I would certainly work more if my son did not have a disability, after all he already goes to school. But that’s just not possible.”

Andrea’s friends and acquaintances were happy for her when they heard that she would receive compensation of 3,000 francs per month for the care work she did. No one was unhappy, everyone knew how much time she invested in caring for her son.

Andrea wouldn’t have to spend so much time on it. Theoretically, she could also place her son in a home. But that was never a problem for her because she wanted to take care of her child herself. Andrea is convinced that housing in a home would also be more expensive for the health insurer:

For the future, Andrea now wants family members to be better informed and for disability insurers or health insurers to approach those affected more proactively.

Other Swiss also feel Andrea. You only discover the offer by chance – or not at all. The desire for revenge of the surviving relatives would like to counter this. That’s why she started a large-scale campaign and put up several posters. “Apart from the pitex of the relatives, as far as I know, no one informs them about these options as standard,” says director Michael Zellweger.

The Tochx family and its partner companies would like to show those affected the appreciation they deserve, says Zellweger. He says: “We want to integrate them into a care and therapy team to increase the quality of care and provide them with support and contacts available to them 24 hours a day.”

But: how useful is this campaign given the already sky-high health insurance costs? Through the efforts of caring family members and their training, the number of unnecessary doctor visits, emergency admissions and hospital or nursing home admissions can be prevented or reduced through the support of qualified nursing staff, says Zellweger. “The entire healthcare system is therefore exposed to a lower financial burden.”

*Names changed by editors