Terminal scheme, care allowance etc.

If you are terminally ill, dying or a relative of a sick person, you can read more about the terminal scheme, palliative care and subsidies for medication.

Sonderborg Municipality offers various schemes that you as an incurably ill or relative can take advantage of.

Can I use a terminal scheme?

If you are terminally ill and dying, you can be offered a terminal scheme through your own doctor or a hospital doctor, where the curative treatment is replaced by a palliative treatment.

The terminal scheme can be offered if you are hospitalized and discharged for continued care in your own home, or if your general practitioner assesses that the course of the disease is terminal.

Once you have signed up for the terminal scheme, you will be assigned a contact nurse who will contact you to clarify your need for help. If help is to be initiated immediately after a discharge, the hospital notifies the municipality so that the help is established when you return home.

The municipal nursing service is responsible for inspecting services that relate to your personal care and nursing tasks such as pain management, wound care or anything else you need. Personal care and nursing care can be provided around the clock, every day of the year.

The visitation department is responsible for the inspection of services relating to practical help (cleaning, laundry, shopping and delivery of goods), training and relief in one's own home.

Can I receive palliative care?

If you need palliative treatment that goes beyond the capabilities of your general practitioner, Region Southern Denmark has a palliative care team that offers palliative care and treatment. The team comes to your home and works in close collaboration with your general practitioner and home nursing care, so that the palliative treatment is coordinated between you and the professionals involved. This can take place by direct contact or by telephone. 

Can I get a medicine subsidy if I am seriously ill?

The municipality can provide help and subsidies for nursing articles, medicines, nutritional preparations, palliative physiotherapy and the like, if the cost is not covered in any other way. 

The help includes, for example, covered expenses for a doctor-prescribed nutritional supplement or palliative physiotherapy in your own home if you are seriously ill and dying and are cared for by either a close family member, the municipality or a hospice. There are no expenses associated with the assistance.

Can I create a treatment will if I do not want treatment?

If you are 18 years old and do not have a guardian, you can create a treatment will.

In a treatment will, you can express a wish that you do not want treatment in a number of situations if you are no longer able to exercise your right to self-determination, for example by:

  • Life-prolonging treatment in a situation where you are inevitably dying
  • Life-prolonging treatment in the event that illness, projected old age impairment, accident, cardiac arrest or the like has resulted in such severe disability that you will permanently be unable to take care of yourself physically and mentally
  • Life-prolonging treatment in a situation where the treatment can lead to survival, but where the physical consequences of the disease or of the treatment are considered to be very serious and painful
  • Receive treatment by coercion according to the rules of the law on the use of coercion in somatic treatment of the permanently incompetent.

The former living will scheme is now the treatment will scheme. However, living wills are still valid.

Create a treatment will here.

Can I take care leave with care allowance as a relative?

If you want to look after one of your close relatives in their home during the person's last lifetime, you can apply for care allowance. A condition for the award of care allowance is that hospital treatment, after a medical assessment, must be considered hopeless, and that the condition does not necessitate hospitalization or stay in a care center.

If the dying person is hospitalized or similar for a shorter time, the care allowance does not lapse automatically.

How much can I get in care allowance?

The care allowance amounts to 1,5 times the daily allowance amount to which you would have been entitled in the event of your own illness. If you are not entitled to care allowance on the basis of sickness benefit entitlement, you can be paid a care allowance of DKK 16.637/month. (figures from 2022). However, the amount cannot be paid together with other public benefits.

If several people share the care, the amount is reduced accordingly.

If you, as the employer, choose to pay a salary to an employee who cares for a dying person, you can be paid the amount that the employee would otherwise be entitled to in care allowance.

The right to care allowance ceases when the care relationship ends. The right to care allowance is retained for up to 14 days after the death.

Can I get funeral assistance or compliance assistance as a relative?

Relatives can apply for funeral assistance when a person dies without leaving a fortune. Click here to apply and read more about funeral assistance.

Funeral assistance is a subsidy that is paid to help pay for the cost of the funeral. If you are applying for the highest possible funeral assistance, the probate certificate incl. estate inventory is attached to the application.

You can also apply for compliance assistance if your spouse or cohabitant dies. The compliance allowance is a lump sum that depends on your income and wealth.

Compliance assistance must be applied for no later than 6 months after the deceased's date of death. You must have lived with the deceased spouse or cohabitant for three years before the death in order to receive compliance assistance. If you are a pensioner and receive a compliance pension, you cannot apply for compliance assistance.

Where can I see case processing deadlines?

See case processing deadlines here.

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Woman takes care of her dying husband

Contact us

Care and Development
Ellegårdvej 25A
6400 Sønderborg

Phone hours:

Monday - Friday: 8.00 am - 9.00 am