Posted here for traffic.
I’m very confused about what help (if any) I may be able to get from the government as my situation is probably a little different from most people.
I’m self employed, earn about 1.5-2k a month, but occasionally get lucky and end up being asked to take on a bigger one off job and will get a nice bonus. I’m currently receiving a UC top up but about to receive a small amount of compensation money that’ll take us just over the limit to be able to claim. It won’t be a crazy amount, enough to clear off some large debts, invest in equipment and marketing costs for my business and pay for an operation that I urgently need for a worsening medical issue that requires a very long wait with the NHS. I don’t get PIP, but I have applied and may potentially get something for the mobility element if successful which may help in this situation, but I’m not hopeful because it’s one of those conditions where some days are better than others.
We will have a bit left over after paying things off, but probably still too much to claim UC. I really don’t WANT to be claiming anything, I can make do on what I earn but with childcare costs it will put me in a bad situation financially, that money would be gone in less than a year with older children relying on me too. But my business has big potential if I can have my partner involved. It’s not so easy for him to get an alternative job as we live remotely (I run the business from home) with no transport, and I need help with my mobility some days due to my condition so I don’t injure myself.
My partner currently looks after the baby whilst I work, but wants to get involved in the business as I need help on the admin side and he understands the business as well as I do. My medical condition can leave me struggling to juggle all the business needs by myself some days. If he were to get involved in my business part time and we’re both working, are we then eligible for help with the costs even when not on benefits? We’d both be self employed working on a family business, I couldn’t ‘employ’ him as earnings aren’t always guaranteed (lots of chasing late invoices, a really bad month followed by a great one with a good bonus etc.) How do you prove how many hours you’re both working in this scenario when you’re sharing a bank account? Gov UK ask about how many hours you both work, but it doesn’t work like that for me, I’m paid by the job and each job has a different price.
I’ve looked into tax free childcare, but it doesn’t seem like we’d get much back from that, around £2000 a year? When childcare is probably going to be £1000 a month part time. We won’t be earning a great deal more to begin with but this should hopefully change in the near future as we’ve built things up and got more clients. On such modest earnings how do we afford the childcare costs, which will likely be 3/4 of our earnings?
Hopefully someone knowledgeable can advise me. Neither of us are really in the position to get alternative jobs and we’d both be on minimum wage and struggling if we did.