The Corona special care period has existed since mid-March 2000, which enables employees to take time off to look after their underage children. On November 1 of the previous year, there was an additional legal claim if there are official school or class closings. This has been asserted 558 times so far, the government said on Saturday. A total of 32,000 people have been looked after so far.
Image: APA (Techt)
The special care period was extended three times and – as Minister of Labor Martin Kocher and Family Minister Susanne Raab (both ÖVP) emphasized in a broadcast – also improved. If the reimbursement of costs by the federal government was initially only 33 percent, it later rose to 50 and ultimately to 100 percent.
In 2020, 15 million euros were budgeted for this, and in 2021 an additional 2.5 million euros will be available. So far, a total of almost 9 million euros has been paid out for around 6,000 applications. A total of 28,000 people were released (73 percent women, 27 percent men), who in turn were able to look after around 32,000 people – mostly children.
