Lofoten, Nordland | In Nordland, NAV defies priorities in the state budget

This year, NAV Nordland will not prioritize allocating new initiative places within Permanently arranged work in sheltered businesses (VTA-S). Instead, they send the entire pot to Varig arranged work in ordinary business (VTA-O), which has a much lighter set-up.

Thus, the municipalities in Nordland have to foot the entire bill when they have residents who need VTA-S places. The new places must be purchased directly from the work inclusion companies and at full price.

In 2024, 500 new VTA places were allocated over the state budget. The Storting assumed that these places should be prioritized in a 60/40 distribution in favor of VTA-S. However, NAV Nordland has chosen to disregard the great need for new VTA-S places in favor of the controversial VTA-O measure. VTA-O is a measure whereby companies in the ordinary business world can bring in an employee who is on disability benefits. For this, the company receives approx. NOK 6,000 a month.

It is of course nice that people have the opportunity to work outside in ordinary business life, but the statistics show that the measure is used for a different and “easier” target group than those for whom the measure was originally intended. At the same time, people do not stay in the scheme particularly long, and on average it only takes 2-3 years before they drop out. After that, neither NAV nor we know where they go. In any case, they don’t go to ordinary work. Then it is timely to ask what is the effect of this measure?

In order to see if better results can be achieved, the government has decided that a system of follow-up by supervisors in the municipally owned work inclusion companies in VTA-O will be tested. We have great faith in this. Business has neither the capacity nor the expertise to follow up these target groups themselves. With facilitation and assistance from the experts in municipally owned work inclusion companies, we believe this initiative has great potential to be successful. The challenge is that no one has heard anything more about this trial scheme. Despite this, NAV Nordland prioritizes VTA-O.

The consequence is that applicants for permanently arranged work at a municipally owned work inclusion company must be on a waiting list for up to 10 years (!) unless the municipality decides to fully finance a place purchased by the municipality. We believe that the municipalities cannot come to terms with this, and that NAV Nordland must step in to discuss a solution.