You may be entitled to social assistance if your income is not enough for essential everyday expenditure, such as food and housing costs.
Social assistance is the last-resort form of financial assistance. Before applying for basic social assistance, you must find out if there are some other benefits or sources of income available to you.
• Handling of basic social assistance (income support) is carried out by Kela
• Wellbeing services counties are responsible for supplementary and preventive social assistance. These can as a rule be granted only on basis of a special consideration. Note that you will always first need the decision on basic social assistance from Kela even though you only apply for supplementary or preventive social assistance from your wellbeing services county.
In your application for basic social assistance you report your personal data, assets and expenditure. Include also the requested attachments. Your salary information Kela obtains directly from the national incomes register. Kela handles your application in seven working days as a rule.
Kela grants basic social assistance usually for one month at a time. If you though have regular income that will not change during the next upcoming months you can apply for basic social assistance for several months at a time.
The basic amount of social assistance is meant to cover the essential daily needs such as food and clothing. The basic amount covers the following:
food
clothing
minor healthcare expenses
personal hygiene and keeping your home clean
local public transport
newspaper subscription
telephone and internet
hobbies and recreation
For these expenses you do not need to provide receipt.
Social assistance can be granted also for other basic expenses such as:
housing expenses
public healthcare expenses
prescription medicines
daycare costs
necessary moving expenses
costs of obtaining a necessary identity document
costs incurred by the long-distance parent for seeing the child.
For these expenses you need to present for example a rental contract or an invoice.
If you have specific expenses that are not covered by basic social assistance you can apply for supplementary or preventive social assistance. Wellbeing services county may at its discretion, grant supplementary social assistance. Note that you will always first need to apply to Kela for basic social assistance.
Supplementary social assistance can be applied for special needs or circumstances, for example to cover the costs of children’s leisure activities and hobbies, furniture or to replace a broken household appliance.
Preventive social assistance can be applied for instance to alleviate difficulties caused by a sudden deterioration of the financial situation. The purpose is to promote independent coping and prevent social exclusion.