AIBU - this universal credit cannot be right?

[Efilio]

I am a lone parent (live alone, no partner). I get no spousal maintenence and work 30 hours a week and earn about £1,500 a month. I have 2 children age 2 and 7. Childcare bill comes to between £500 and £700 per month. Children only go to childminder / nursery so that I can work. My universal credit is £305 - £358 per month (it varies). On the break down of costs it doesn't say anything about my childcare component even though I always upload the invoices from the childminders/ nursery and the bank statements showing I have paid. AIBU to think I have been underpaid? I read today that it pays 85% of your childcare! But it pays nothing like this amount. Thank you for reading!

Childcare vouchers are disregarded as UC works on net pay not gross.

You need to make sure it is not in your to do list, sometimes because there are about 50,000 steps to submit it (lol over exaggeration but seriously you have to go through about 4 screens to sumbit it) sometimes you could think you have done it but not actually have done it.

Also a case manager has to verify it, and they usually do it the day after you submit it (cos they check for childcare first thing in the morning) so sometimes if you submit it really late it can be verified later and not added until a few days down the line.

So I rang them just now, apparently their "system is down" so unable to get anywhere. Lady on phone said that it sounds like I do need to speak to my case manager as childcare component should be on there. But that she can't even add a note to the system at the present time, because the system is down. Can't say how long for 🤷‍♀️

The discrepancy in the earnings that your employer has said vs what you earned could be to do with the dates that you receive your UC- for example ours ran from the 27th of the month to the 27th of the following month because that was the day our claim began- we would get our payment breakdown a few days before on the 23rd. Some months we'd "earn" much less UC because we were paid (enployment) calendar monthly and woukd sometimes get 5 weeks wages in a UC month. That really fucked us financially because we could never budget for how much UC we would get!

Why should the taxpayer be paying this rather than the father of the children?

@quizqueen

Why should the taxpayer be paying this rather than the father of the children?

What an awful comment. Presumably he also has housing costs now? And she is a taxpayer...

@quizqueen

Why should the taxpayer be paying this rather than the father of the children?

Well if he only pays a tiny bit of child maintenance he clearly isn't going to pay a big childcare bill each month is he ?

@YouBringLightInToADarkPlace

The discrepancy in the earnings that your employer has said vs what you earned could be to do with the dates that you receive your UC- for example ours ran from the 27th of the month to the 27th of the following month because that was the day our claim began- we would get our payment breakdown a few days before on the 23rd. Some months we'd "earn" much less UC because we were paid (enployment) calendar monthly and woukd sometimes get 5 weeks wages in a UC month. That really fucked us financially because we could never budget for how much UC we would get!

Your payment is seven days from the last day of your assessment period and the payment is calculated on earnings reported in the assessment period.

If you have correctly claimed the childcare, you will get it back. It was missing from my April payment, and I had to follow up twice, but got it back a couple of weeks ago.

There's good info on this page about how childcare costs work - scroll down to about half way www.understandinguniversalcredit.gov.uk/new-to-universal-credit/children-and-childcare/

If it doesn't get sorted with a phone call then do request a mandatory reconsideration of all the missing amounts. Although it's best to get that done within a month, if you have good reason for not questioning if earlier or if it's a DWP error then they can go back much further
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/benefits-introduction/problems-with-benefits-and-tax-credits/challenging-a-benefit-decision/challenging-a-dwp-benefit-decision-on-or-after-28-october-2013/challenging-a-benefit-or-tax-credit-decision-asking-for-a-reconsideration/

Unfortunately the system was down yesterday, it caused major issues nationwide. I’m not sure if the lines are open today, but either try ringing again this morning or leaving a journal message to your case manager under “payments”.

The outage shouldn’t affect your response time though, it’s unlikely your case manager would have replied yesterday so they would have likely got back to you next week regardless.

Were you ever paid the childcare element? When did you start your job? If you comb through your journal around those times, you should be able to see any completed to-dos and journal messages which may shed some light. It could be human error, where they forgot to action it, or there’s a slim chance that there was an error when you completed one of the to-dos that meant it automatically didn’t go through.

One more thing, did you ever report that you were employed? If your most recent status is not employed then the system will not pay earnings. So it may be a faff and you may as well try it but go to "Report a change of Circumstances" >"Work and earnings" and Report that you are employed from when you started your job. Most common error for childcare is that the parent is not reported as employed. The system DOES NOT update itself so no matter how much earnings come through it will not update you to employed, you MUST Report the change every time you are employed or not employed.

@YouBringLightInToADarkPlace

The discrepancy in the earnings that your employer has said vs what you earned could be to do with the dates that you receive your UC- for example ours ran from the 27th of the month to the 27th of the following month because that was the day our claim began- we would get our payment breakdown a few days before on the 23rd. Some months we'd "earn" much less UC because we were paid (enployment) calendar monthly and woukd sometimes get 5 weeks wages in a UC month. That really fucked us financially because we could never budget for how much UC we would get!

oh you are totally right about this I think. Because of the 'assessment period' not being the 1st to the last day of the month. I hate UC so much 😭

@quizqueen

Why should the taxpayer be paying this rather than the father of the children?

TBH I would very much like the father to be paying but since he has a history of emotionally and financially abusing me, and does everything he can to make like really difficult for me, (even at the expense of his own children), it isn't going to happen.

@thinkingaboutitall - l never been paid childcare element. Started job years before I split up with my ex, started claiming in August but have had very bad health this past year so only properly looked at the breakdowns now.

I did speak to someone yesterday who was very nice but said that the system was still down so they couldn't look at my case specifically. She said that it will probably need to be escalated.

@Musereader thank you i will double check and see what I have got down but I am pretty sure my job is on there as I was working when I first made the claim.

@MiddlesexGirl Thank you for those links I expect it will have to go to a mandatory reconsideration