When 18-year-old Gniewko Paw wants to meet friends or go for a walk, he needs help from his parents to get there. He is both blind and hard of hearing.
– I am being taken away from the right to be like everyone else, he says.
Despite that, he has had his application for accompaniment according to the LSS, the Act on support and services for certain disabled people, rejected by both the municipality and the administrative court. When the decisions were appealed to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Administrative Court, his case was not taken up.
– Above all, I am not taught to be independent and that is something that is very important if I want to be able to manage outside the home and have a life on the same terms as everyone else with vision, says Gniewko Paw.
The visually impaired often have to pay for an escort
The National Board of Health and Welfare shows in a report that fewer visually impaired people are entitled to accompaniment within the framework of LSS, especially young people under the age of 23.
In the last ten years, fewer young people have received support through LSS, some have instead received support through SoL, the Social Services Act. This often means limited help, and a cost for the visually impaired, at most SEK 470 per hour in a municipality.
The fact that fewer people are accompanied and thus become isolated and restricted is something that the National Association of the Visually Impaired has long raised the alarm about.
– The municipalities say no all the time when the visually impaired seek accompaniment, they mean that we don’t belong to category three as it says in the law. Even though it was the purpose of the law, that the visually impaired could receive the intervention companion service. This means that the visually impaired become a second-class citizen, says Niklas Mattson, chairman of the National Federation of the Visually Impaired.
He wants the government to take the National Board of Health and Welfare’s report seriously and follow their recommendations.
The Minister of Social Affairs: “Concerned about the data”
The proposal in the report is that the government should investigate a new law so that the visually impaired are more clearly included in the group that is granted interventions within LSS.
Social Security Minister Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M), says that right now it is too early to give an announcement, but that she and the government are taking the report seriously.
– For people who are visually impaired, it is of course extremely important to be able to receive support in order to live an independent life and be able to participate fully in society. And that’s why I’m very concerned about the information that comes out, says Camilla Waltersson Grönvall.
At the same time, she believes that the LSS is clear legislation as it is, but does not want to comment on whether she believes that the municipalities are interpreting it incorrectly. As for the escort fee of SEK 470 per hour, she says that it is unreasonable.