Federal Health Minister Linnemann plans to cut children's sick days - SPD and Greens criticize

Federal Health Minister Carsten Linnemann is criticizing the so-called children's sick days - which is met with criticism from the SPD. “The SPD stands for a family-friendly policy that specifically supports families and gives them the time they need for their children,” says the family policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, Jasmina Hostert, to the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. The Minister of Health is pursuing exactly the opposite with his plans to reduce children's sick days.

In the government survey, Linnemann spoke out against a further extension of the regulation, according to which each parent can claim 15 child sick days per year. The number would then drop to ten. There were that many before the expansion during the corona pandemic. Linnemann emphasized that politicians would do well to withdraw special Corona rules.

The SPD criticizes: Families need relief instead of new burdens. Anyone who has to care for sick children needs time and support, not cuts. "The debate about reporting sick from day one has already placed parents under unjustified general suspicion. The planned reduction in children's sick days now continues this false logic," says Hostert.

"Just because something was bad before is no reason to go back"

The Green MP Johannes Wagner criticizes Linnemann's argument. “The regulation of 15 children’s sick days was deliberately continued years after the end of the corona pandemic because it has proven itself,” he said. "The argument that it's just a matter of returning to the old rules is cynical. Just because something was bad before is no reason to go back there."

According to a legal stipulation, an extension applies this year - namely 15 days per child and parent and 30 days for single parents. After the end of special regulations in the Corona crisis, the longer period of 15 days had already been extended by law for 2024 and 2025. Previously there were ten children's sick days per year per parent.

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Parents with statutory health insurance can apply for sick pay if a child under the age of twelve is sick and they are therefore unable to go to work. The health insurance company then covers a large part of the loss of earnings and pays child sickness benefit - usually 90 percent of net earnings.

Linnemann opposed criticism as if children's sick days should be abolished completely. "It will be ten days, times two that's 20 days a year. And we had that in all the years before Corona."

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig had also criticized the possible reduction in children's sick days. “That’s not possible,” the SPD politician recently said. When it came to health care reform, the SPD clearly negotiated that children's sick days would remain. “We have to strengthen families in Germany, we have to support them.”