So mother is not well. She’s getting more and more troubled, actually. Recently a close relative passed away and she was unable to be there. A holiday to Turkey did not work out this year either. Everything hurts. Especially her back. She prefers not to get out of bed. “Not until I get to her in the morning.”
Just before the hearing closes, the judge asks: “So, how is your mother doing now?”
That is the moment when the daughter is allowed to tell what is really going on. And the lawyers are silent. She concludes with: “It’s my mother, I like to do it. It has become my job.”
The case for which she had to be in Utrecht at a quarter to ten that morning, ends at five past ten in a settlement. The representative of the Municipal Executive of Amsterdam says apologetically: “Normally I try to do this before the session, but that was different here”.
The Central Appeals Board, the highest administrative judge in social insurance matters, was pulled out today with five people, one of whom online via Teams because of “serious cold complaints”. But the council has no more to do than ask a single question. It’s the only case on the roll that morning. The case after that, from half past ten, was withdrawn the day before the hearing.
Just before the hearing, the civil servant discovers that his case file is not in order
At issue is an appeal by a resident of Amsterdam against a decision by the municipal council not to grant the requested 10 hours of ‘ambulatory home care according to non-professional rate’ to the daughter over 2019-2020, but a total of 6¾ hours, of which only 2¾ hours for the daughter. The remaining 4 hours should be spent on professional care and not on informal care.
Mother suffered from panic attacks and anxiety disorders at the time, the chairman reads in the file. And the municipality thought that daughter pampered her mother too much. At least “too little encouragement to self-reliance.” Or, as the congregation representative succinctly puts it at the hearing, “You are copying too much.”
But just before the hearing, the official discovers that his case file is not in order – and that the decision of three years ago is outdated. In the years after 2020, the municipality took a new allocation decision that is much more generous, at least for the daughter, the daughter’s lawyer quickly made clear to him in the hallway. Since 2020, she has been allowed to claim 8 hours of ‘informal’ ambulatory home care from the municipality. “That decision was therefore unknown to me, which is not appropriate,” the official apologizes as soon as the session is opened. He immediately starts talking about a settlement.
A debate then ensues about individual assessments, their desired duration and size. The abbreviations of social security laws and institutions tumble over each other in the room. The WLZ (Long-term Care Act), the CIZ (Care Assessment Center), the WMO (Social Support Act), the IAB (Indication Advice Bureau Amsterdam). It is about the stress associated with ‘having to apply again and again’ and then ‘sometimes only being granted six months’ versus the municipality that ‘wants to avoid that Mrs. has to visit the municipality every time’.
Anyway, since 2020 daughter has also been satisfied with 8 hours of subsidized informal care instead of 10. There will soon be an appointment in which the care demand of the mother will be reassessed. And the municipality is still prepared to allocate the same number of hours over the disputed period as was provided afterwards.
Depending on the new decision on the assessment for the mother, the daughter will then withdraw the appeal on the proposal of the judge. “Will you let us know by then if there’s anything else the College needs to do?” asks the chairman.
The session lasted just under fifteen minutes. “We now have a gap of up to one o’clock,” concludes the chairman.