More than 6,400 people living with disabilities are enjoying the benefits of the rehabilitation card, and 3,800 employers in Hungary are using the bonuses which have been available since 1 January 2012. The rehabilitation card, which has been reintroduced as part of the restructuring of the support system, helps jobseekers find employment in the open labour market, and also encourages employers to take on workers with disabilities and reduced work capabilities.
Today the total amount of extra benefits made available through the card to employers with eligible employees is over HUF 130 million per month. The card – introduced on 1 January – is generating continuously growing interest among thousands of employers, to the benefit of people with disabilities who were previously unable to join the labour market because of bureaucratic regulation.
In order to assist the return to the labour market of people with impaired health the employment benefit system has been completely restructured, and part of this has been the introduction of the rehabilitation card. In the system preceding the restructuring, the aim of support was not rehabilitation, but employment in segregated environments. When receiving funding it was not in employers’ interests for workers to be rehabilitated as soon and as completely as possible, and a system for returning workers to the open labour market did not operate.
In the new system the emphasis has shifted from long-term employment in protected environments to the employees with disabilities themselves. The goal is to guarantee conditions appropriate for their training and state of health, the development of their ability to adapt, and their reintroduction to the open labour market.
In the new regulatory framework a previously complicated, often disproportionate and sometimes unjust funding system has been replaced by two forms of support: transitional and long-term funded employment. The support system is not governed by the status of companies, but the state of health of the people with disabilities.
(Office of the Human Rights Working Group, EMMI)