Municipalities are demanding the return of paid care benefits. The Human Rights Ombudsman is investigating the matter.

Voivodes in the Silesian and Pomeranian Voivodeships challenged the payment of care benefits to caregivers of adults with disabilities for 2022-2023, arguing that they were inconsistent with Article 17, Section 1b of the Family Benefits Act. The Act stipulates that the benefit was only available to individuals whose disability appeared before the age of 18, or before the age of 25 if they were continuing their education.
In 2014, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that differentiating eligibility for benefits based on the moment a disability develops is unconstitutional . In its justification, it emphasized that "guardians of adults with disabilities must be treated by the legislature as entities belonging to the same class. Therefore, they cannot, in principle, be treated differently."
The legislator did not implement the judgment of the Constitutional TribunalHowever, the Tribunal’s judgment was not implemented by the legislator and it was not until 2024 that the challenged legal norm was eliminated from the Act on Support Benefits.
Therefore, the voivodes conducting the audit for 2022-2023 concluded that they acted in accordance with the regulations in force at the time. The Commissioner for Human Rights disagrees and cites judgments of the Supreme Administrative Court, which also ruled in favor of caregivers of persons with disabilities, granting them the right to the benefit.
Taking into account the established and uniform case law of administrative courts in this respect, the Commissioner for Human Rights requests the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy to revise the position of the Ministry
- we read in the position.
From January 2025, the care benefit for the caregiver of a disabled person amounts to PLN 3,287 , and is indexed annually.
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