To wonder if Carers will ever be paid more?

[croppedhimout]

I get less than £70 a week carers allowance for 19/20 hours worth of care every day. It's disgusting

AIBU to wonder if we will ever be paid more? I'd say no because...

1. Nobody seems outraged at how little carers are paid, not in the media anyway, where it counts

1. Carers for the most part can't strike.

We get DPs for DS1 and DS3, but for DS1 we ‘only’ get 14hrs a week term time which is actually 7 hours as he needs 2:1 and 20 hours a week in holidays so 10 hours 2:1. And for DS3 we get 6hrs term time and 8 hours holiday. Which I know is more than many but we are still providing a huge amount of care for a measly £69.70 per week.

@JustKeepBuilding if you are being paid these DPs at least it is more in your pockets than just the pathetic CA.

It's never going to be enough for the hours of care you actually provide, especially if your children need 2:1 but fighting to be paid the DPs yourselves however measly is worth it.

@StickyFloor I’m not getting more in my pocket than the measly £67.90 CA. The LA don’t allow us to use the DPs to pay ourselves or close family. They did relax the rules during the pandemic but tightened them up again.

@JustKeepBuilding apologies, I misunderstood. I'm so sorry they won't acknowledge you and pay you accordingly.

I just cannot understand why some LAs take this view and I also find it staggering that each LA can apply it's own policy as they see fit. There are so many policy variations to do with care between LAs it's yet another unfair aspect of the system.

I m so tired of fighting my own LA about every little thing, but paying me to care for DD was the one helpful thing they did. I realise I got lucky.

Im.also a carer for my severely disabled child,the problem with increasing carers allowance would be that for those of us who also get tax credits,/ universal credit,is carers allowance is a taxable benefit ,the tax credit/ universal credit would be reduced or even stopped making us no better off.

@StickyFloor My post could have been clearer, sorry.

We challenged the LA, including looking at whether legal proceedings were possible. In this case it wasn’t our LA acting unlawfully as LAs can use their discretion to pay parents/close relatives when it is necessary. Our LA argued it wasn’t necessary and we don’t think we can meet the threshold to prove it is as we have good carers in place (at the moment! Getting the right ones for DS1 wasn’t easy).

I agree about the variation between policies that is allowed. If we moved to the neighbouring LA they would allow it, but we don’t want to move for many reasons including adaptations to the house and moving would risk their excellent EHCPs.

@JustKeepBuilding on the plus side, it's great that you have found good carers. Although the unfairness of LA employing carers for some hours but expecting parents to do the rest unpaid is absurd isn't it?

Our case turned when I told LA I would refuse to do any caring and they could organise and sort it all out themselves (dd has 24/7 care). At that point they started working with me, although tbh I would rather we had good PAs and I didn't need to keep stepping in. At this point for us it's not about the money, more the total lack of support and inability to hire.

The prospect of ever moving terrifies me as the whole process would begin afresh and goodness knows if the next LA will be better or worse.

Did it for 22 years. Tried to stay in a job but it wasn't possible due to lack of care provision in school holidays and wrap around care - plus hundreds of medical appointments and illnesses which meant DD couldn't go to school. Carer's allowance didn't go anywhere near making up for lost salary.

After DD died I'd been out of work for so long that I was totally deskilled. I suppose I could have become a paid carer on minimum wage but after 22 years as an unpaid carer it wasn't top of my list for careers! Now I'm approaching 60 I've got another 7 years to wait for a state pension (4 years short on contributions due to Govt moving the goalposts). I would have had a decent workplace pension if I'd been able to work so the knock on effect keeps coming.
But I don't think things will ever change. In fact they'll probably get worse.

@bigbluebus what an awful position you were left in, I'm so sorry. The neglect of parent carers in particular should be a national scandal.

I was a carer. No, we'll never get paid more. NHS and society rely on us doing what we have done / do for pittance.

I think the whole carer allowance needs to be seriously reviewed. There is a major difference between a mum who gives up a well paid job to look after her severely disabled child FT and a mum who has never worked who claims because her FT college attending teenager claims low level DLA for mild ADHD.

There should be tier levels, a bit like PIP and evidence to be provided.

You don't get carers for low DLA. At 16 children transfer to PIP. PIP is generally very harsh on things like "low level adhd".

The point is that anyone can claim carer allowance for someone getting PIP or DLA, and even though they are supposed to care 35h, the definition of care is very subjective.

For some, what they get claiming CA is a nice added income for providing limited care. For others it is nothing, and really an insult for the hours and demands of the care they provide.

@vivainsomnia Caring for someone with low rate care DLA doesn’t qualify the carer for carer’s allowance. The child you are caring for needs to get at least MRC which means they need at least “frequent help or constant supervision during the day, supervision at night or someone to help while they’re on dialysis”.

@StickyFloor We are very lucky. DS1’s carers are amazing. They are husband and wife ex foster carers who then adopted, when their DC became adults they started taking respite placements. It took 3 respite placements breaking down in 18 months for the LA to fund the higher rate we needed.

DS3 has much, much easier needs to manage (without fighting he wouldn’t have any support) and therefore it’s much easier to find a PA. We found his PA via a university.

Although the unfairness of LA employing carers for some hours but expecting parents to do the rest unpaid is absurd isn't it?

It is, especially when they deem DS1 needs 2:1 for respite and education, but, obviously, that doesn’t apply to me or DH.

Is that all carers allowance is? We're almost in the position where dh may need to quit his job to look after his mum. We couldn't live on £70 per week as a family of 4

@Looneytune253 I think the situation needs to be approached differently when it's an adult needing care.

An adult assessment should be done by the LA to determine the person's care needs, which must be significant if DH is thinking about giving up work.

Then it's a question of finances and who pays. If the person has limited income and assets then LA will fund the care and it may be possible for your DH to be paid. If the person isn't eligible for LA funding they should be paying for the care themselves which is something to sort out within the family, and can be difficult to resolve fairly.

Well she has her own home but ex council, nothing extravagant. She claims regular pension etc but only extras such as dla

@JustJustKeepBuilding DD required a qualified nurse plus a carer for our 7 hours a week respite at home. I was expected to manage by myself when DH wasn't available. Our 18 nights a year overnight respite were costed at £340 per 24 hours and that was 8 years ago. The carers allowance was an insult considering the number of hours I cared.
Some people get the same amount because they pop round and do a bit of shopping/housework/make a meal for a relative. Nothing like the medical care I had to provide, the sleepless nights, the constant admin, hospital appointments, getting equipment serviced or repaired on top of all the daily care. There should definitely be different rates.

Wow that's shocking!!! How could anyone afford to live on that? I'm in Ireland and a full-time carer for my son who has special needs and receive €295 a week. Also receive a monthly payment of €330 to assist with extra things needed by child and also an annual carers grant of €1850.

Well You would have too look into universal credit etc,
we are a family of four with two adults two children one severely disabled in receipt off DLA ,I get carers allowance,we also get tax credits and my dh,works full.time .

It's not just £70 ,though ,My son gets DLA,he gets high rate Care and Mobility so because we have a mobility car ,the High rate mobility component pays for that ,but we get £360,a month High rate Care p!us tax credits of over £700/ month Child benefit £140ish / month plus my c carers allowance,and my dh,get a full time wage( albeit low paid) from work I'm not saying it's great but it's not just £70/ week for four of us!

@bigbluebus I didn’t say some people don’t provide more care than others. Of course they do. I challenged the other poster on their claim a parent can claim CA for caring for their child in receipt of LRC because that isn’t true. I also challenged their claim someone receiving at least MRC needs limited care and has mild needs, which isn’t true.

To claim CA one has to be providing 35hrs care a week. You can’t claim it if all you do is “pop round and do a bit of shopping/housework/make a meal for a relative.“

Personally I don’t see how different rates of carer’s allowance would work. If you make the process of claiming CA more complex you are going to vastly increase the waiting time, the number of appeal, and the cost of administrating such a system. There is always going to be a variability in the type and amount of care that is required as every disabled person’s needs are different. It is never going to be on a comparable level to a full time job, unfortunately. You have to fight for it but for those with DC with complex needs there are other avenues for care too.

For anyone wondering (or just nosey) how it works with universal credit here's my "earnings".

Single parent to one three year old, caring for someone who's not my child.

Four weekly:
Universal credit entitlement before carers is £890
Carers allowance (£268) is deducted
Carers element (£168) is added.
The amount of universal credit I get is then £790

Add the carers allowance and we're living off roughly £1050 a month.

@Cryingcryingcrying so am I right in saying that you have an extra £160 per month to live on now that you have caring responsibilities. Not much as an hourly rate! But at least you have extra money coming in compared to what you would have if you stopped caring.

For a number of carers the problem is that we have to give up employment in exchange for becoming carers and therefore are much much worse off each month.