Child benefit at twice the basic rate for a child living at home who needs extensive care

If a doctor, specialist or treatment provider has established that your child needs a lot of extra care, for example because of an illness, disorder, condition or disability, you can qualify for child benefit at twice the basic rate. However, your child must also meet all of the following conditions:

• your child is aged 3 to 17
• your child lives at home (sleeps at home at least 4 nights a week)
• Your child has a positive Wlz care indication from the Care Needs Assessment Centre (CIZ )

If your child turns 18, you may still qualify for child benefit at twice the basic rate providing your child meets the following conditions:

• your child is now 18, but on the 1st day of the quarter in which we received your claim, your child was still aged 17
• at that time, your child was living at home (sleeping at home at least 4 nights a week)

If your child meets these conditions, you can claim child benefit at twice the basic rate

If the Care Needs Assessment Centre (CIZ ) gave your child a Wlz care indication on or after 1 July 2024, and you have given the CIZ permission to share your details with us, you do not have to do anything else. We will send you a letter automatically. If your child meets the qualifying conditions, you will automatically be awarded child benefit at twice the basic rate. The qualifying conditions are:

• your child is aged 3 to 17
• your child lives at home (sleeps at home at least 4 nights a week)

If you have refused the CIZ permission to share the details of your child’s Wlz care indication with us, you will not qualify for child benefit at twice the basic rate automatically. If you would still like to qualify for child benefit at twice the basic rate, you will have to submit a claim yourself.

We will then ask the CIZ to assess whether your child needs extensive care. The CIZ may already have medical information on your child. On the claim form, we will ask you to grant the CIZ permission to use this information. This way, your claim will be processed more quickly.

If the Care Needs Assessment Centre (CIZ ) gave your child a Wlz care indication before 1 July 2024, and your child meets the following conditions:

• Your child is aged 3 to 17
• Your child lives at home (sleeps at home at least 4 nights a week)

In that case, you can qualify for child benefit at twice the basic rate, but you will have to submit a claim yourself.

If your child meets the qualifying conditions, you can submit a claim to the SVB for child benefit at twice the basic rate. You can find out if your child meets the qualifying conditions by answering the questions further down this page.

The SVB is not able to assess whether your child needs extensive care. We will therefore ask the Care Needs Assessment Centre (CIZ ) to do this on our behalf. When the CIZ has completed its assessment, it will give its opinion.

The CIZ needs information from you

The CIZ needs information from you in order to establish whether your child needs extensive care. ‘Extensive care’ means that a child needs considerable extra care due to an illness or condition, which also makes your job as a parent much more difficult. This must also have also been diagnosed by a doctor, specialist or treatment provider. The CIZ will send you a form asking for details of your child’s illness or condition.

The CIZ may also have additional questions for care providers, such as support workers, treatment providers or care farms. If so, the CIZ will send you an authorisation form to obtain your permission first.

The CIZ will only use the information it gathers to formulate the opinion they send to the SVB.

Be sure to send your completed claim form, the requested medical documents and the authorisation form to the CIZ within the time limit. Please take into account that it takes time to collect together the information and fill in and send the forms. Once the CIZ has received this information from you, it will start processing your claim. 

Important: Do not send any medical information to the SVB, as it will not be taken into account in the assessment.

How does the CIZ formulate its opinion?

The CIZ will make a thorough assessment of your child’s situation based on the information it receives. The assessment consists of 10 areas where your child may need extra care. The CIZ will give points for each of these areas. The total number of points will determine whether the CIZ’s opinion is negative or positive.

If, at the end of the assessment, there are not enough points for the CIZ to give a positive opinion, they will contact you.

If you would like to know how the CIZ assesses a child’s care needs , go to the CIZ website and download the PDF ‘Beoordelingskader’ (available in Dutch only). This PDF contains information on extensive care and the assessment framework used by the CIZ. If you have any questions about the assessment framework, you can phone the CIZ on +31 88 789 1400.

The CIZ will inform us of their opinion

If their opinion is positive and your child meets all the qualifying conditions, you will be awarded child benefit at twice the basic rate. If the opinion is negative, you will not be awarded child benefit at twice the basic rate.

If the Care Needs Assessment Centre (CIZ ) gave your child a Wlz care indication on or after 1 July 2024, or you submitted a claim to the SVB yourself on or after 1 July 2024, we will check whether we can backdate your claim. Child benefit at twice the basic rate can be backdated by a maximum of 2 quarters . How many backdated quarters you can get depends on the date your child met all the necessary conditions, and the date we received your claim.

If you have received child benefit at twice the basic rate for a full year because of your child’s extensive care needs, you may be able to get an extra yearly payment.