Proposition 53K3439

Projet de loi relatif à la reconnaissance de l'aidant proche aidant une personne en situation de grande dépendance.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP the Di Rupo government

Submission date

March 12, 2014

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

care of the disabled home care voluntary work

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld LDD MR VB

Abstained from voting

∉ N-VA

Party dissidents ¶

• Alexandra Colen (VB) abstained from voting.
• Peter Luykx (CD&V) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

April 2, 2014 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

by Mr. Vincent Sampaoli, rapporteur, refers to the written report.

Mr. Speaker, we will support this bill, even if it is, because it constitutes a formal recognition of the caregivers, whose role in our society today cannot be underestimated. On the contrary, we cannot emphasize them enough.

When one knows that by 2020 the number of 80-plus will increase by 25%, one realizes that the necessary care will also increase and then not everything can be arranged through facilities. More than ever, we will have to appeal to caregivers, family, neighbors and friends. We call that the socialization of care, a new evolution, which we will have to take into account. The caregivers play a very important role in this.

The new law does not have any consequences for the mantel caregivers that are recognized. It is rather a symbolic recognition. We at CD&V are also not immediately requesting party for a mantel care status, which can give rise to professionalization of mantel care. The peculiarity of mantel care is precisely that it takes place free of charge, unselfish and spontaneously, without paid performance. We believe that this should not come into the behavior. Let mantel care be what it is, it may not be the intention of it being professionalized.

What we want is the following.

First, we want the caregiver to be better protected. This can be done, for example, because certified caregivers can make a good insurance.

Second, it seems to us important that the caregiver is primarily provided with support and training so that he can incorporate his volunteer work in an even better way. This could also include strengthening the network of reception and reception centers, supplementary home care, nursing services and the like. Also the holiday systems, the taxation and the like, we need to better align with the needs of the caregiver.

Third, caregivers, who are spontaneously engaged, should also be able to rely on formal care. They should receive a care guarantee, in the form of self-employed nurses, home care, caregivers, general physicians and the like.

Fourth, there must be a clearer offer of information for caregivers so that they do not have to find out everything themselves. Now they often have to look for information about benefits and the like. This should be better supported, through the health funds, through the mantel care associations, through the OCMWs. There must be a kind of information consultant that guides the caregivers in all possible practical, administrative and financial matters.

We will therefore support the present draft. We are pleased that through the design we give the caregiver the recognition that he or she is more than worthy.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, the project presented to us today is a positive initiative that will allow to have a legal anchor of the recognition of close caregivers for the future. However, it must be noted that its scope is minimal because it only grants symbolic recognition, which we do not underestimate, but does not offer any status to those who would enter its scope. It only partially meets the demands of the industry. However, considerable preparatory work was provided with the associations concerned. This text does not address the social and legal consequences.

Assistance to a patient, a sick or dependent person is often manifested by a regular presence of the surrounding, care and comfort. Disability, old age, illness are life difficulties that are sometimes difficult to assume alone. The suffering person must be able to get help. What can be more natural than getting the help of a close relative or friends? It often happens that this close person sacrifices his profession to free up time and devote it to the person who needs his help. It is not uncommon to abandon everything: his profession, the rights and social protections associated with it, to devote himself to his loved one.

That is why we advocate for the establishment of a real social status of the close assistant in order to ensure the guarantee of social rights when he devotes his time to help. We want to offer them protection in the areas of health care, unemployment, family allowances and pensions. A person who has to interrupt his professional activities in order to take care of a close sick person cannot value this period for his pension rights. This is unfair and we want to eliminate this injustice.

Mr. Secretary of State, dear colleagues, the MR group will support this bill because it is a positive initiative, a first step that will allow to have a legal anchor of the recognition of close carers for the future.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, dear colleagues, the work on the recognition of rights for close caregivers is a topic that we have been examining as environmentalists for years. Therefore, we have been waiting for a result at federal level for a long time.

This bill was based on a study conducted in collaboration with associations of caregivers and therefore parents of people with disabilities, people with serious diseases, people in dependence situation. We would have thus wished that the bill submitted by the government not only identifies a aided – the characteristics of the person who needs help – and a caregiver – the person who, in a relationship of trust, provides assistance in the management of his daily life and at the level of care – but also provides that that person who either does not work or ceases to work to fulfill this task can retain essential rights, including the right to unemployment allowance, even if he does not meet the obligations of availability on the labour market. The same applies to the person who benefits from an integration income and to the person who stops working part-time or full-time, who should retain a whole range of rights, in particular relating to his pension.

Unfortunately, this project does not meet the rights we expected! Certainly, acknowledging the existence and naming these persons without granting them a status is a first step. None of the proposals on the table demanded a real status, but maintenance of rights. Finally, the existence of the relationship between a caregiver and a caregiver is recognised, but there is no right to it.

In the committee, I obviously defended the granting of these rights. I heard a secretary of state explain the limits he had reached in government negotiations. I have heard members of the majority parliament call for the granting of certain rights and regret that they are not attached to the bill.

As a result, today I have been able to submit three amendments on two subjects with no budgetary impact. I see no reason to refuse them. Two amendments simply stipulate that the person recognized as a caregiver will not have to be available on the labour market as long as this status as a caregiver is recognized to him.

Furthermore, an amendment provides that this person, if he worked and he ceases to work, will not lose later, for the period when he ceased to work to be a close assistant, in the amount to which he will be entitled for his pension.

If the parliamentarians of the majority cdH, MR, CD&V, Open Vld are consistent with their interventions in committee, they should support these amendments.

In a more comprehensive way, I would also have wanted to say, concerning this complex matter of the relationship between a caregiver and a caregiver, that this advance must be situated in a context where the public authorities, all levels of power confused, undertake to develop as much as possible the services available to those persons who find themselves in a situation of dependence. It is excluded that the recognition of a caregiver or caregiver replaces services and that you find yourself with people who are not working or who stop working simply because the services set up by the community are failing.

Another important element is reflected in the project. In our proposal, this was a really crucial element: it is that several people can assume this role of assistant with the person helped. Today, we realize that in general, it is a woman who stops working to take care of her child, parent, brother or sister. The person who does this and who stops working completely leaves the professional environment and therefore also his social environment. Therefore, there is not only discrimination and burden on one of the members of the family or a household, but also loss of social bond and isolation.

Furthermore, I would like to insist on one element of importance for us, but which is not included in the bill, is that assistants and assisted must be able to build a relationship knowing what they are doing. Sometimes you get into a relationship of help and help because you want to do well, because you think you have no other solution, or because it is really a life choice that you make at a given moment.

We realize that this relationship is not always easy. It is a relationship between two people who are in different situations; sometimes, one can witness situations of abuse both of the assisted and the assistant. Therefore, it seemed useful for us that this relationship should be accompanied by associations that gather, train and inform close caregivers.

I did not submit an amendment in this regard, as it did not seem urgent. We know that recognition of aid associations is based on several skills and that the Regions also have a role to play in this area. In any case, it is important that mutuals recognize the characteristics of a person to help as well as the status of a helper. In this way, an association could frame and offer regular training. It would also provide support when the relationship is difficult or when one no longer knows very well how to react to the other.

This is a first step, though modest, but necessary. We regret the absence of a minimum of rights associated with this recognition of the close assistant. Therefore, I will submit three amendments so that they are put to the vote tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, when this project came to the commission about fifteen days ago, the sector of close carers welcomed this moment as a victory or, in any case, as a historic moment. This was stated by the President of the French Association of Neighbouring Assistants. This text has been waiting for a long time and I hope it will be supported by this assembly. I don’t know if the vote will be unanimous, but all the parties voted in favour.

This is ⁇ a first step that consists of a procedure for social recognition of these qualified people as close assistants. Our Quebec friends call them the natural caregivers. These caregivers are also said to be somewhat supernatural because they are people who give a lot of themselves for their loved ones, not necessarily for a family member. There is also a lot of solidarity and generosity in these actions. It is also well known that a large number of families are under the pressure of daily life, which sometimes takes up 24 hours a day. These people expect social recognition but also a status that helps them in everyday life, in their relations with authorities and administrations.

This is a very important and, in our view, irreversible process. You have opened a door that will not close. Neighbors are recognised by this bill. Of course, there is a lot of work behind it that will begin in the next legislature to concrete and see how to deny, in relations with social security, social parastaials, that aid that society must provide to those people who really need it, who are sometimes really exhausted.

We saw it again this morning. Today is World Autism Day. You were in dialogue this morning with the industry and the families involved in this issue.

The whole sector was waiting for this bill, a signal from parliament. This is the signal we are going to give today.

These people are very numerous, if not limited to a too restrictive definition of the temporal notion of the activity devoted by our fellow citizens to helping and supporting a person in a situation of great dependence. They are also very numerous in relation to their personal or emotional appreciation of what they consider to be a situation of great dependence or simply as a situation of great physical and/or psychological distress.

We want to pay tribute to all these people. We demand that the royal decree that will determine “the people of great dependence” – these are the terms held in this bill – not be the subject of controversy among experts with, in the end, a budgetary arbitration on those who would be recognized in a situation of great dependence and those who would not be recognized as such.

It is still that, for the future, our group has three requirements so that the close assistant, finally recognized, does not come to duty the society of its responsibilities. Thus, the engaged responsibility of the close assistant cannot be an obstacle to his professional and family life, nor a mandatory function, nor a final decision, a person who can decide to stop this function. These three principles must be at the heart of a project that adequately articulates the freedom of the citizen, the freedom of each with the knowledge and the requirements of a collective framework that respects freely consented aid, but which poses fundamental requirements in relation to taking care of the great dependence.

Dear colleagues, it is obvious that the Socialist Group will enthusiastically support the project that is presented to us today.

I have not much to add.

I would just like to say that, in my opinion, we are taking a big step. It will be, tomorrow, to provide very concrete answers to the needs of close caregivers, as everyone has ⁇ .