Update: 28 August 2024

Agnieszka Gergont, press spokesperson for the Bolesławiec City Office:

On 5 August 2024, Ms Daria submitted an application for a care benefit to the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Bolesławiec. Two days later (7 August 2024), MOPS in Bolesławiec issued a decision granting the aforementioned benefit. Despite being informed that she needed to collect the decision, Ms Daria collected it only on 19 August 2024. The benefit was transferred to the client’s account on the same day.

Care benefits are paid after the client collects the decision granting the benefit, in accordance with the date specified in the decision. In exceptional circumstances, an applicant may submit a request to expedite payment of the benefit. (Until the end of July 2024, Ms Daria received a care benefit from the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Legnica.)

She adds:

The Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Bolesławiec informs that people with minor children who are experiencing a crisis may be referred to the Crisis Intervention Centre in Bolesławiec, operating under the District Family Support Centre in Bolesławiec. The centre provides specialist psychological assistance, social, legal and counselling services, and shelter.

Mothers with underage children may be referred by social welfare centres to homes for single mothers. Adult men without shelter may be referred by Social Welfare Centres to shelters for homeless men. It is not possible to refer an entire family in which the child is an adult to a single centre, due to the lack of such facilities in Poland.

The family may receive free psychological and legal assistance from the Municipal Counselling Centre for Families and People Affected by Violence, Addiction and Crisis in Bolesławiec, as well as assistance from a lawyer and psychologist at this centre.

On 20 August 2024, while at this centre, Ms Daria received full information about the possibility of using the aforementioned assistance.

And adds:

An employee of the Municipal Housing Management Authority in Bolesławiec informed the client by telephone about the rules for allocating housing, the approximate waiting time and the required documents. The client mainly asked about obtaining a flat immediately, outside the normal queue, because the owner of the premises she had been occupying had terminated the tenancy agreement. She did not submit an application for the allocation of premises from the municipality’s housing stock.

Last week, Ms Daria, who moved to Bolesławiec in February, called us. (The reader had previously lived in Złotoryja.) The woman rents a flat on Gałczyńskiego Street. The problem is that she received a notice to terminate the tenancy from the flat’s owner.

Originally, she was supposed to move out at the end of September. Now the owner wants Ms Daria to leave the flat by 25 August. The reason? Late payments. As the reader told us: – MOPS does not always pay the money on time.

The woman cares for two sons with disabilities. The younger one, aged 11, has suffered from nephrotic syndrome since he was 20 months old. As Ms Daria stresses, it is a chronic and serious illness requiring regular visits to clinics. (At one point, the boy used a wheelchair.) The Bolesławiec resident receives a care benefit for looking after this son.

The reader says that “everything was fine” until her other son, aged 19, came to Bolesławiec to live with her. According to Ms Daria, he has Asperger syndrome. Unfortunately, there are no documents confirming this, which, according to our interviewee, his father failed to arrange. The older son had in fact lived with his father in Legnica for a long time, but reportedly did not like it there. As the reader explains, the 19-year-old does not leave the house, has no contact with people and needs therapy.

Our interviewee mentions that both boys should have their own rooms. The older one because of issues connected with the disorder mentioned above, and the younger one because he catches infections very easily.

The woman says that she went to the District Family Support Centre, where she was offered a place in a home for single mothers, but on the condition that she could take only her younger son with her. At the city office, she was allegedly told that the city currently had no vacant cooperative flats. She was also told that she had to submit an application, but that she might have to wait several years for a flat itself.

She also asked other institutions about the matter, but without success.

Ms Daria also went to MOPS. There, she says, she learned that she was not entitled to any assistance because her income was several dozen zlotys too high. However, the woman adds that the amount she spends on medical care for her younger son was not taken into account.

She also adds that she wanted to go to work. (Because of the 11-year-old’s condition, part-time.) However, she was unable to find such a job. And she does not know what she is supposed to do. – Am I supposed to pack up, go to MOPS and put up a tent there? – she asks bitterly.

She also stresses that she will not give up and will not allow herself to be separated from her sons.

Last Wednesday (21 August), we asked both the city office and MOPS about the matter. So far, we have not received a response.

Today (27 August), we called the person who had contacted us. She informed us that she was in the process of moving out.