Your privacy at social services
If you apply for social assistance benefits, the social services of your municipality must assess whether you are entitled to social assistance. To do this, social services must know your financial situation. On this page you can read what social services may and may not ask you.
On this page
Data about assets and debts
Social services must find out how you are doing financially. This is stated in the Participation Act. To find out, social services check your income and wealth.
Your wealth is the value of your assets minus your debts, if you have any. To determine your wealth, social services may ask about your assets and debts.
Questions about assets
The Participation Act does not make it clear what ‘assets’ are exactly. Social services may therefore ask questions to determine what assets you have. Social services usually ask questions such as:
- What is the balance on your bank accounts?
- Do you own property (such as a house), securities (such as shares), a car, motorcycle, caravan or boat, antiques and/or jewellery?
- Do you currently expect to receive assets (for example, from an inheritance yet to be divided, divorce or because you no longer live together)?
- Do you still have claims to money or assets?
- Are the contents insured? If you have a high contents insurance policy, this may indicate that you own expensive items.
If you are wondering why social services want to know certain things about you, you can always ask them. Social services must then prove that it is necessary for your right to benefits that you provide this information.
Note: You are obliged to provide information to social services about everything that is important to (continue to) receive social assistance benefits. If necessary, you must also provide supporting documents.
Data on expenditure
Social services are usually not allowed to ask about your expenditure. Sometimes they are, for example, if you apply for special assistance because you have additional costs (expenditure), such as medical expenses or study costs.
Checking bank statements
Social services may check your bank statements to see what income and assets you have. You can make your expenditure illegible if you wish.
If social services ask you to log in to your bank account at their offices via online banking, you cannot shield your expenditure.
If this makes you feel uncomfortable, you can indicate that you will take paper bank statements with you to social services. Your expenditure on these statements will be illegible. Social services cannot oblige you to provide insight into your bank account via online banking.
Note: If social services suspect you are committing fraud, you cannot make your expenditure illegible.
Copies of bank statements
After checking your bank statements, social services are allowed to make copies of your bank statements to prove that the check has been carried out. These copies will be included in your file as evidence.