Rehabilitation allowance now offsets pregnancy and parental benefits

Parents who draw raskausraha or vanhempainraha while undergoing rehabilitation face a coordination rule: when kuntoutusraha is granted for the same days, its amount is deducted from the pregnancy or parental allowanceKela. The two benefits can therefore overlap in timeKela, but they are not paid in full side by side — the rehabilitation allowance reduces the daily parental benefit for each overlapping dayKela.

The timing of the kuntoutusraha decision matters. Rehabilitation allowance is often granted retroactively, after the pregnancy or parental allowance for the same period has already been paid out at the unreduced rate. In that situation an overpayment arises on the raskausraha or vanhempainraha sideKela, and Kela recovers the overpaid amountKela. Recipients who know a kuntoutusraha application is pending should therefore expect a recovery decision once the retroactive grant lands, rather than treating the full parental benefit already received as final.

There is also a planning option for the parental allowance. A recipient may cancel vanhempainraha days for which the allowance has not yet been paidKela and use those days after the kuntoutusraha period insteadKela. Only unpaid days can be moved in this way; days already paid out cannot be bankedKela. Postponed days remain usable until the child turns 2Kela, which gives families a window to shift parental benefit days past a rehabilitation spell rather than losing them to the overlap.

The rule sits inside the wider vanhempainpäiväraha system, the umbrella term covering raskausraha, erityisraskausraha and vanhempainraha: kuntoutusraha is deducted from the parental daily allowance granted for the same periodKela. The cancellation option applies to vanhempainraha days specifically, not to the fixed 40-day raskausraha spellKelaKela, whose days run consecutively and cannot be shiftedKela. Advisers should check whether a client in rehabilitation during pregnancy or parental leave is receiving overlapping benefits, warn of the recovery risk on retroactive grants, and consider moving unpaid parental allowance days past the rehabilitation period before they are paid out.

Legal basis: sairausvakuutuslaki (1224/2004) and laki Kansaneläkelaitoksen kuntoutusetuuksista ja kuntoutusrahaetuuksista (566/2005).