Additional services for children with disabilities in crèches and kindergartens Authorisation
The aim of integration assistance is to avoid or alleviate a disability. If your child has a disability or is at risk of being disabled, you may be granted additional benefits for daycare at the daycare center. For this, an individual need for support must be determined.
Your child can be cared for in an inclusive group with and without disabilities or alone in a group with children without disabilities (individual integration). Additional services are possible in crèche groups (children under the age of 3), kindergarten groups (children from the age of 3) and in after-school care groups (from school enrolment to the age of 14).
If there is a certain need for special support, children can also be cared for in a curative kindergarten for children with a mental or physical disability, in a speech therapy kindergarten or in a curative education kindergarten for children with a hearing impairment.
In speech therapy kindergartens or curative kindergartens for children with a hearing impairment, children with a significant speech or hearing impairment that is not only temporary – usually after reaching the age of 4 – are cared for. There they receive both curative education and medical-therapeutic services.
Curative education kindergartens, speech therapy kindergartens and curative education kindergartens for children with a hearing impairment specialize in the promotion and care of children with disabilities. They do not always offer joint care for children with and without disabilities. If the institution responsible for integration assistance identifies an individual need for support in your child, it will bear the cost of the benefits. Your income and assets may be taken into account.
In a speech therapy kindergarten or in a curative education kindergarten for children with a hearing impairment, curative education and medical-therapeutic services are provided jointly as "speech therapy treatment" (interdisciplinary complex service). The basis for this is the Lower Saxony "Agreement on the Promotion of Curative Education and Medical Therapies in Speech Therapy Kindergartens". Whether your child has a need is determined by the local provider of integration assistance - with the participation of the specialist advice on hearing, language and vision of the Lower Saxony State Office for Social Affairs, Youth and Family.
- You must submit an application to the competent authority. This can be informal.
- The competent authority will ask you to use a form and submit further documents
- Necessary documents may be:
- Early intervention and/or
- Speech therapy
- medical certificates
- Reports from day-care centres/kindergartens and/or social paediatric centres (SPCs).
The prerequisite for integration assistance is:
- the existence of an actual or threatened disability
- as well as a restriction of participation.
The individual need for support is determined within the framework of a participation and overall plan procedure by the competent institution of integration assistance.
There are no fees.
- You should contact the integration assistance institution responsible for you.
- There you can ask for advice and support or submit an informal application.
- The competent authority may ask you to fill in a form and submit further documents.
- The authority will conduct a participation and/or overall plan process to determine your child's individual need for integration assistance.
- Once all documents are available, the competent authority will check on the basis of your information whether or to what extent you will receive integration assistance.
- After reviewing your application, you will receive a notification of approval or rejection.
The processing time of the application depends on many different requirements.
Applicants do not have to observe any deadlines.
The authority to which the application is made must determine within two weeks of receipt of the application whether it is responsible for the application. If the authority is not competent, it shall forward the application without delay.
An objection may be lodged against the decisions of the competent integration assistance institutions within one month of notification.
After completion of the objection procedure by means of an objection decision, an action may be brought before the competent social court within one month of notification.
Further information can be found on the websites of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Equality and the Lower Saxony State Office for Social Affairs, Youth and Family. In addition, the competent authorities for integration assistance provide information on services and contact persons on their websites.
The text was automatically translated based on the German content.
Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Equality
The institutions responsible for integration assistance are responsible.
The local institution responsible for integration assistance to children and young people with a mental or physical disability is the responsibility of the local integration assistance provider.
The local providers of integration assistance are the rural districts, independent cities and the Hanover region. In principle, the district or the district-free city in which your residence is located is responsible.
