To think actually carers allowance is the most disgustingly underpaid benefit.

[Spaceboundeminem]

You get about £61 a week to care for a severely disabled person. That's less than job seekers and about half as much as pensions are. The amount paid in carers allowance is classed as taxable income so your tax credits are dropped. So you don't actually get the £60 even.

It's hard work caring for someone and as it is soo hard to find childcare suitable for a disabled child working is often out of the question for many parents of a child with a disability. Personally I notice people moaning about how low state pension is and how low job seekers is yet carers allowance is the lowest of all.

Yes - like return says, my ds goes to a ss (day independent) and they have loads of extra holidays, last weekend was one of the frequent 4 day weekends, half term coming up is over 2 weeks long (like last year too), despite his age (now 12) I or someone else (not that there is anyone available to do this anyway) has to be here when he is dropped off from school - there is no 'school gate' no chance to meet any other parents except very briefly twice a year. It's a very lonely life but for me, worse than the lack of income, worse than the soul-destroying lack of stimulation and identity from going out to work, is being belittled for not doing so. To be made to feel inferior because I don't have a 'career' when there is nothing I want more - I worked hard until I was 40 and educated to postgrad level. I had to give it all up to care for ds and fight for years to get him an education. All I can do now is find bits of extremely underpaid work on a self-employed basis that I do at home. And put up with the snotty comments about 'going out to work' from anyone that notices I even exist.

Carers allowance is £61.35 a week.

You have to spend at least 35 hours a week caring for the person who needs care.

I have been ranting for years over this. How can they justify this, it's no nowhere near minimum wage, and it's fucking hard work.

I agree with previous posters, careers save the government an absolute fortune yet are not compensated for our efforts. It's a disgrace.

And yes, people who say, I take my hat off, I couldn't do it etc etc, implies it a sort of selfless choice people make and aren't they wonderful. No. It's your child and you don't really have a choice. You HAVE to do it, like Fanjo says, you can't really give your child away. I'll stop now before I start ranting about support and provision.

It's a fucking joke.

It is hard lacks, I'm retraining in science, hopefully will go on to some lab based work that is more 9-5 than catering, which is what I used to do!

Ds' go to breakfast club & after school club, which I have to pay double for as ds2 requires 1:1 but I should get some help from the college for childcare & travel expenses so it's just about doable :)

It's a 4hr round trip there & back every day I go in there so it's exhausting juggling it all but I feel so much better in myself, mentally etc than I did before I started. That, and I feel like I'm doing something to help make things better for the future.

It will be harder next year when I'm at uni but hopefully I'll be driving by then :D

It is if it's a non relative but you can earn along side it if you can't live on the allowance.

If for a spouse or your own child, then surely you don't do it for the money but do it as they are your family and it needs to be done.

If for a spouse or your own child, then surely you don't do it for the money but do it as they are your family and it needs to be done.
Of course you don't do it for the money, doesn't mean though, that because your choice of work has been removed, you should be paid a pittance for it. You should be paid a living wage, carers save the government millions per annum. Add up the cost of 24 hour care, food, people to cook the food, the gas and electricity used when someone is in care, the specialist medical care often provided by parents. The list is endless.

YANBU. And you can't claim JSA if you are not actively seeking a job!
It's disgraceful how undervalued Britain's carers are.
And lets face it, most carers are women, so the cynic in me is not all that surprised that the powers that be couldn't give a shit how badly they are treated. (I am thinking of other female dominated professions that get similar short shift, namely library assistants and midwives).

Yanbu, it is very little. The only good thing about CA is that your pension is protected and it's not means tested so you can have another working person in the household. Doesn't help single parent families, of course.

I've got some sympathy with the 'I couldn't do it' perspective as I couldn't do it full time.

I do respite care for weekends for disabled teenagers - there is no way I could do it full time and people that do are fucking amazing.

In order for them to get the respite they have had to put on their ovaries of steel and threaten to put their children into residential care - they have had to put up with endless shit from SS guilt tripping them with 'it's your child, you chose to have a child with disabilities' and other bollocks.

If it was me and my child had severe disabilities requiring me to never sleep and they had limited cognitive capabilities I too would be threatening to drop them off outside SS.

The fact that people don't means their on their knees half the time without the strength to fight the shittest system you can imagine.

YANBU

I basically have given up work so that I can get my son through mainstream until secondary where he will hopefully go to special school. I have to be available for meetings, appointments and exclusions plus I do a lot around his schooling to support it. Childcare is fine adhoc - say a session a month but any more and he struggles.

I hate it - feel so guilty. I am trying to study so that I can change job but there are weeks (like last week) when I am literally full time caring for him. I had one deadline last week work wise and i just met it.

I said to my tutor that I felt like I had no excuse as I physically had the time and she got really angry with me. I hadn't realised how I 'normalised my experience' to get through - she is amazed by me.

I do a lot of volunteering too but I have to drop in and out of it. Can't really commit.

However, financially I am no worse off. As a single parent trying to balance his needs against work I was actually not able to put food on the table. I can now use his DLA for him not a roof over his head. Before just being a carer it was not possible to have a balance with work... His needs were too great :-(
So I am grateful for the opportunity.

I am a lil confused as I'm a carer for daughter and way financially better off than I was when i was on normal benefits , I still get income support along side carers allowance ( which works out 30 quid a week more than just income support )
Also get extra tax credits ( 531 pound a month for one child )
And then daughter gets dla at 320 so over rall we get about roughly have t got exact figures on me 1300 pound a month instead of just under 600

Try being me. I care for my Dad (dementia, prostate cancer), in the UK, about half the time, but I actually live in Ireland, so I'm not eligible for any allowances over here (the UK), or there (Ireland). Luckily Dad has a reasonable work pension, so he covers my flights back and forth and my 'keep' whilst I'm here - which works out cheaper for him than a paid carer would be (though we get one in when I'm not there). Am an only child, so no one else available to help out. Obviously it's impossible for me to get a job in either country as I keep travelling back and forth - have a husband (self-employed, struggling business) in Ireland, so I can't up sticks and be in the UK permanently. So, anyway, we're doing this on a self-funded basis and I do, sometimes, feel utterly alone in the middle of it all. I wouldn't dream of not doing it though - I'm just grateful we - as a family - can just about manage the financial side of it all. Much sympathy to those for whom benefits are essential, and agree that the carer's allowance is far too small.

Mummy

I am financially better off as a carer but only because my sons disability was preventing me from working

If you are able to work a 'normal' (whatever that it!!) pattern or amount as a family or even a single person then you are definitely financially better off.

Carers benefits are better than just benefits but OP was referring to being able to work

Mummy I get child tax credits, they take off the Carers Allowance, it counts as income, I have no other income as I am just (and only just) above the savings threshold for other benefits. So, I work an 18 hour day, every day of the year for a pittance. Yes we get a bit extra in child tax credits, but that isn't a passport benefit. I have to pay for prescriptions, dental treatment, glasses, wheelchair care and repair etc. as well as all the other things one has to pay for when looking after people with disabilities, transport, parking, special diets and so on.

"I couldn't do it"

No. Neither could I. However, if I don't, he goes into social services care. Would you put one of your children in care?

I don't mean a faceless disability, I mean ONE OF YOUR OWN CHILDREN. The ones you have now.

Cos you see, the parents of children with disabilities love their children just as much as you live your own children.

So all the "I couldn't do it" in the world will not give me my job back. It won't mean I can let my eleven year old in a different room without an adult, never mind a different building. It doesn't mean I don't HAVE to do it.

Families with disabled children teeter on the brink of disaster and poverty because there is no choice. I cannot go and get a job. There is nobody else on this planet who will look are my child so that I can work. I am currently doing a home study course to give me a better chance of finding a job in a school, because I cannot do anything else because, quite apart from not being able to afford CHILDCARE, THERE IS NO CHILDCARE for a child like my son. You cannot send a child who sets fire to things to an after school club that his lsa doesn't attend.

Hahn I see lol I defiantly can't work but if I could my wages would be a lot less so was a bit confused sorry.

Same here Mummy. Was on less than £7k working p/t before DD got diagnosed so we are much more comfortable on Carers, tax credits etc. Our tax credits are similar to yours, nothing is deducted even though I am on Carers allowance. Don't have to pay for prescriptions etc as I get income support as well, and DLA covers DD's special diet and other expenses.

But it doesn't work that way for all of us Blue.

Oh, and when working I was on £50,000.

the thing is being a carer is not the same as working.
working you get paid/a teabreak/lunchbreak/holiday/respect/company
and so on. as a carer you get hard work/no respect/ and people saying I couldn't do it/or it has to be done.

I think that people saying things like "I couldn't do it" etc aren't helping the situation as, IME, it contributes to the perception of carers as people who have extra reserves of strength, extra selflessness etc and generally we don't, carers are ordinary people who have to do this and who are in no way compensated by £61.35 for the huge amount of work done.

Society as a whole has to recognise we don't do this out of choice, nor the goodness of our hearts, carers simply HAVE to do a bloody hard job for a pittance and start to reward carers financially for the huge sacrifices they make and the hard work we do.

It should be a living wage for the hours worked quite simply IMO, as a minimum. (I would also like to see retraining paid for, and adequate respite provision, and a damn sight more) but as a basic, £61.35 for minimum 35 hours worked, usually a fuckload more, is disgraceful.

YANBU

Despite the government's promise to protect disability payments and carers allowance, their proposals still involve an element of devaluing, especially for carers allowance.

Daisy how can you "earn alongside it" if you are a full time carer? How ridiculous.

It's interesting for me, as a parent of DC with SN for many years, now physically disabled myself, seeing it from the point of view of the carer and now the.....caree? Cared for person I suppose.

The limitations that disability, and caring, put on families lives and the sacrifices we have to make, is something that is disregarded by many of the general public and treated accordingly by politicians.

The treatment of disabled people and their carers, by this government is disgraceful.

The fact that David Cameron claimed DLA for his own son, yet is now cutting these benefits for disabled people and the poorest people in society, is disgusting.

In fact I'm so angry about it I'm pretty inarticulate, apologies!

Another massive injustice that works against Carer's is that magic earning cutoff point, there is this 'dead zone' between earning £101 a week and £162. As soon as you go over £101 (plus expenses) you lose all your Carer's allowance. So unless you get a huge promotion all of a sudden, you are financial worse off until you can get above the threshold.
As our disabled children get older, so many of us seem to end up working in schools as support staff or TAs, but then can't take up higher level posts, or extend our hours. I have the highest TA level qualifications, and HLTA status and the jobs available over the last couple of years using those qualifications whilst still enabling me to carry out my caring responsibilities have put me on about £150 a week. So I would actually end up with £90 a week.

The earnings threshold should be increased, and a sliding scale introduced so that no carer could ever be worse off.

Incidentally, to those who worry about what will happen when their disabled child turns 18, yes they should be able to claim ESA. Child benefit will be payable until end of the August before they turn 20, and child tax credits (including the disability premium) until the day of their 20th. I have just gone through this with ds - the paperwork is just as bad as the first time you claim DLA and we now have to get regular certificates from the doctor to prove that his cerebral palsy hasn't just disappeared overnight. I bloody wish.

I look at my income for 1993 before 'my new life' began and laugh, my last 5 years income isn't equal to it.