Step 1: Check your own needs
The last infection came back three times, you have trouble sleeping or your back is weak? Are the children playing all over you or is your relationship with your partner in trouble? Then maybe it’s time for a cure.
Step 2: Get advice
Around 1,000 counseling centers in the network of the Mothers’ Convalescence Center offer individual advice and help with filling out the spa application. Alternatively, you can contact private providers. Counselors provide information about therapy offers and clinics, for example about the size of the facilities and their treatment focuses. This plays a decisive role in the selection (see step 4). However, the consultation is not just about formalities. Counselors have an open ear for the needs of stressed fathers and mothers – and if necessary hand them a handkerchief to dry their tears. They also help with submitting the application and, if necessary, with appealing against the refusal of the health insurance company. The consultation is free.
Tipp. This provides information about the nearest counseling centers mothers convalescent work. Many of them are currently offering appointments by phone.
Step 3: Medical certificate
Ask your doctor to prescribe preventive or rehabilitation measures. He has the forms at his practice. Health problems are the basic prerequisite for the approval of a cure, but the health insurance company also checks which specific difficulties arise from the parental role. So tell your family doctor what problems you have to deal with in everyday life: For example, the double burden of work and raising children, or the pressure you are under as a single parent. Separation or the death of a relative are also reasons for a cure, which the doctor can enter in the prescription. There he can also state that the clinic should have a specialization, for example in respiratory diseases.
If your child has illnesses that need to be treated, they need their own medical certificate from a pediatrician or specialist.
Tipp: On the web you can get the attestation form for a precautionary cure or rehab have a look.
Step 4: Exercise your right to vote
If you apply for a cure, you can specify a clinic of your choice. Spa clinics specialize in various diseases and have different offers and focal points. There are also large and small clinics, religious, close to where you live and others far away. There are facilities where only mothers stay and there are facilities where both mothers and fathers are accommodated. The location also plays a role for many parents. Mother-child cures are offered on the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, Lake Constance and in the Black Forest, among others. Think about where you might be best accommodated.
Step 5: Take the kids with you
Children can accompany their mother or father to the spa if, for example, their care cannot be guaranteed at home. You don’t have to have any health problems yourself. But they can also be treated during the cure if they present their own medical certificate. There is an age limit of 12 years for accompanying children. Exceptionally, they are allowed to ride up to the age of 14. There are no age limits for children with disabilities.
Accompanying children are cared for according to their age. There are numerous leisure activities such as sports courses and excursions in the area. School-age children are on leave from school during the spa stay. However, the clinics offer extracurricular instruction so that no major gaps arise.
Step 6: Submit the certificate
After the doctor’s visit, submit the completed prescription to your health insurance company. That’s enough for many health insurers, and a separate application letter is often no longer necessary. The health insurance company should make a decision on your application within three weeks. If it is positive, you can start soon (see step 7). If the health insurance company rejects your application, you have the opportunity to object to this decision. A contradiction leads to success in most cases.
Step 7: Start the cure
If your health insurance company has approved the cure, you have a few months to start it. The deadline is in the permit. When you arrive at the health resort, you should take everything with you that could help you to cope better with everyday life: treatments, sports, seminars, group discussions. Mother-child cures and father-child cures usually last three weeks. It is usually only possible to submit a new application four years after the last cure.