New coronavirus benefits in store for parents and guardians in Finland

Those who were forced to leave their jobs in order to take care of their kids during the pandemic will be granted access to additional funding

The closure of schools in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus has led to a significant shift and change in lifestyle for parents across Europe. With nowhere else to send their kids and with no one else to look after them, many parents were forced to remain home, thus claiming unpaid child leave or outright quitting their jobs in order to care for their kids.

In Finland, however, those people are not alone in their struggles. The country’s Social Insurance Institution (Kela) has announced that it will begin paying a new type of benefits to those who were forced to renege on work in order to care for their kids, be they parents or legal guardians or those who were put into quarantine when returning from a trip overseas.

Helping everyone get through the crisis

The Institution is now accepting applications for the benefits that are also set to be available retroactively – meaning that they will be paid out for the entirety of the lockdown and Finland’s state of emergency between 16 March and 13 May (if the state of emergency ends earlier than that, however, the payments will also be stopped).

It is important to note that the benefits are not tied to income. Instead, they are priced at 28.94 euros per weekday, totalling some 723.50 euros per month – the equivalent of 25 workdays. Furthermore, this type of benefits is available only to the parents and guardians of children in their early stages of education who have taken time off in order to take care of them. Unemployed or furloughed citizens, meanwhile, are allowed to apply to other kinds of schemes provided by the Finnish government.

The situation will perhaps begin resolving itself once the country starts lifting its own lockdown measures and schools reopen – thus allowing parents to return to work and once again provide for their families.