Carers Allowance WTF

[MagicPharmacist]

Due to an absolutely perfect storm of shit happenings, my dad died, my mum has Parkinson’s and I lost my part time job, we’ve made a decision that rather than look for another job right now I will care for my mum. I’m very happy to do this and we are fortunate enough that I can be on minimal income for now, although obviously not ideal.

I do a little bit of self employed work, no where near the threshold. My mum gets attendance allowance so she told me to apply for carers allowance.

But the numbers make NO SENSE to me. It’s not anything I’ve ever had to look at before but how the fuck do they justify this?

£81 a week for 35hrs caring (and obviously it’s more than this for most people). And then on top of that you are only allowed to earn £150? Why? What’s the justification?

And then the new cap will be £196 earnings which is equivalent to 16hrs at minimum wage. Why? Why are they so invested in keeping carers poor?

I don’t really understand why this is a means tested benefit. Surely it’s in the government interests to have family carers? £81 a week for 35 hours minimum work and then you can ONLY make less than 800 a month on the side? How do they expect people to live?

I’m ENRAGED. Not necessarily for myself; we won’t starve as my husband has a good job. But if he earned less we would be fucked, my mum would either have to have carers in every day or go into a care home.

Oh god and the hoops to jump through as well; the form was a nightmare and they want so much info about me and my previous employment and current income. And it takes at least six weeks for a decision…could be months.

AIBU to be shocked by this?

Yes absolutely. My aunt used to claim for carers allowance and supplement for my gran, despite not providing any care for her. My gran got DLA and so there was an automatic entitlement for someone to claim carers allowance for her. My aunt saw it as a way to get an extra bit of money just by virtue of my gran being entitled to DLA. Meanwhile another aunt provides 24 hour care for her adult son and gets the same as my other aunt did. It really does need overhauled.

Yep. It's a shit show. I couldn't earn any other money if I tried, I look after two family members.

So... my hourly rate for a 35 hour week (which in itself is a bloody good laugh) is £2.34.

And the DWP guard this benefit like it's a Golden Bloody Egg.

If a carer cares at least 35h per week on behalf of the government, then carers allowance should be paid at 35h of NMW. It's never gonna happen though esp under this vile new labour government who are on a mission to make the lives of people with disabilities and their carers even harder.

all this labour verbal bla bla bla about supporting 'working people'. Can someone explain why a carer working 70-80h per week is not considered 'working'?

There isn't, you get one or the other.

I cared for grandparent, grandparent and parent and now finally parent as grandparent died in 2019. Because of the time involved I was caring pre universal credit and receiving income support alongside it (all of 45ish pounds a week) so a couple of years ago they had to manually migrate me across to universal credit.

You get carers allowance and universal credit OR universal credit with a carer element. Both work out the same. There is no additional 200 supplement if you're on UC.

(eta; I may have misread and realise you might be talking about something different? , you said said something about not claiming the carers allowance but my exhausted carer brain didn't see that bit first off, apologies)

I feel you deep in my bones for that response. I am 24/7, there's no side life and things have gotten slightly easier recently in that in only caring for parent not grandparent AND parent during day and being called up at night to get them something or move their position or help them to the toilet etc etc etc...

I think it works out as all of 20p an hour when spread over the full week? Perhaps I should request her a care home place 24/7 and see if they could get away with paying the carers there 20p an hour?

I claim carers allowance for my mum, and she gets attendance allowance. Her attendance allowance is not affected by the carers allowance.

Can you get your mum attendance allowance also?

It's really awful. I can only work part time due to caring responsibilities but I earn too much to claim (I do 20 hours, but even at 16 I'd earn 'too much' and I don't earn loads, just not minimum wage).

If your mum gets attendance allowance won’t she be paying you that to care for her as it’s an allowance to pay for help? So you’d get carers and the attendance allowance money?

If some claims a qualifying disability and lives alone then they may be claiming Severe disability payment (sdp). It is this that the person loses if someone claims Carers Allowance (basically the theory is either the person lives alone and gets SDP as their costs are expected to be more living with a disability, or someone cares for them and they get the carers and the person doesnt need sdp anymore). Just be very careful as SDP entitelment is often what pushes older people into the pension credit threshold (AA is not counted in the means test but the entitelment to SDP raises the threshold) and PC is the best welfare benefit around entiteling the person to full housing and council tax support, winter fuel payment, tv licence if over 75 etc etc. If your mum gets PC then it may be worth checking if her losing the SDP *when you claim carers, will lose all her PC. Often best in this situation for older person to keep claiming SDP and pay the child/carer the CA amount. In short Carers Allowance impacts other benefits so always worth running a benefit check first.

Carers Allowance isn't very much by itself, but most claimants claim some means-tested benefits which make up more of their income. I used to claim Carer's Allowance with DLA for my DS, plus Income Support, Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credits and Council Tax Benefit. Most of that has changed to UC now, but it's pretty much the same.

Carer's Allowance was taken off my Income Support but I received a carer premium on my Income Support which made it worth claiming. The amount of Carer's Allowance was just a small amount of my income, we got more from the tax credits as it had disabled child premiums added. So increasing the amount of Carer's Allowance wouldn't make much difference to most people as it gets taken off, and the value in it is that it means that I had no work search requirements and got Class 1 NI credits.

It's one of the few benefits which doesn't take a partner's income or assets into account, so I think it would be controversial to increase it. I still claim it although I have a very high earning DH and lots of savings in my name. I've had no problems claiming as I don't work and my DS gets PIP.

In the past caring for your parents in their old age was the quid pro quo for them looking after you when you were young. Now people expect to be paid for it. Presumably you can't be paid for a full time job and a full time caring because many people fall into that catagory of looking after family around work.

I looked into this when my mum had dementia, but never pursued it because I have another income and it seemed too fiddly to calculate. However, I have a friend whose father is disabled and lives at home. His wife gets the council budget for his 4 visits a day paid to her to manage. She employs my friend to do two visits a day and the other daughter to do the other two visits as his ‘carers’ even though she and one of the daughters lives in the same house as him. Both daughters earn £200 a week for this, despite doing no personal care. I’ve always wondered how this is allowed

This is the problem with all/most benefits- those who play the system and those who don’t get enough for what they do. Genuinely don’t know what the answer is.

People these days may have moved away from their families, are likely to have had children later so may still have school aged children at home, or may just not be able to afford to give up work to provide full time care if it's needed. Smaller families as well.

As for expecting to be paid for caring - people need to eat, keep a roof over their heads, pay the bills. And it's a lot cheaper for the state to give a pathetic amount of benefits to support carers than the alternatives.

I think its because if someone is requiring a huge amount of care they probably are also entitled to quite a lot of disability benefits and universal credit so the household overall would be receiving quite a lot of financial support.

Where it gets difficult is when adult children are caring for elderly relatives they don't live with, as those adult children can end up not able to work much due to the caring responsibilities but not seeing those disability /pip/uc benefits in their own household. Carers allowance works better for those living in the same household as the person they are caring for.

@overthebow Attendance allowance is not necessarily to pay for care. Attendance Allowance is one of the eligibility benefits to be able to claim Carers Allowance.

They also subtract most of the carers allowance off of the UC allowance.

We’ve struggled horribly since my DH got cancer.

Just to correct you....

You can claim both Carers Allowance and the Carer Element of UC.

If I was working outside of the home and earning 81.30 a week it would not affect my UC, or would at least be deducted on a sliding scale - but Carers Allowance is deducted pound for pound from UC as "unearned income".

I want DH to claim Carers Allowance, but he has the being paid in lump sums every three to four months issue. We don't get UC, savings were too high until recently, and when I'm made redundant later this year the redundancy payment will make them too high again.

We get DLA for DS, which is 4,800 a year. That's it. I earn about 19,000/yr take home which has to cover all bills and household costs, DH about 4-5,000 though he's going to have to cut down on work as it's not sustainable, he needs to keep the car running and have enough to cover his personal costs.

If we could both work full time just on minimum wage we'd be significantly better off.

No, women looked after their parents (and often in laws) when they became elderly. Usually because they either didn’t work or had retired in their 50s/early 60s, had their own children in their early 20s so they would have long flown the nest and the endless expectation of care would then move to the elderly. Thankfully opportunities for women have changed so this isn’t the average life expectations anymore. It’s not just about the elderly either, life can change in an instant. I certainly didn’t foresee having a child who will need care for life, a woman I know didn’t expect her husband to lose all physical function in his 50s. I didn’t expect my own parent to develop Alzheimer’s in their 40s. Care giving isn’t just ‘well you should suck up taking care of your elderly parents’, what we should be looking at is why there isn’t any social care available at all.

"In the past" a large number of people (women) didn't work and there wasn't the same necessity for 2 incomes to keep a roof over your head that often applies now, read the threads on here about families struggling with 2 wage earners. Families were less geographically fractured and there were more hands to share the care being given.

I gave up a well paid job 5 years ago to care for my husband who has now been completely bedbound for over 2 years.My health has taken an enormous hit, as has my private pension potential as I'm of the generation working until 67. Please explain to me why anyone would be in this position for around £80 a week if there was any viable alternative that didn't involve putting the cared for person into a nursing home?

I don’t know much about it but sounds like a shit show of a system that lacks fundamental understanding of how caring actually works. I expect they are capping the number of hours you can work/the earning threshold because they think it can’t be possible to be caring for someone 35 hours a week and working more than 16 hours. Yes you are right, it will be a lot more than 35 hours for some people. Don’t they think people need care at weekends and through the night? I mean jeez there are 168 hours in a week. There needs to either be recognition, and appropriate payment, for all those hours or recognition that many people will also need to do some work, and and set the caps a bit higher.

It’s to stop people abusing the system (like they have been doing for years). You can’t work full time & care for someone, it’s not feasible but time & time people have tried it on. I’m not saying you are at all but it’s families like you who are now struggling to navigate a system because of the dishonesty of others.

My son applied for carers for me. It should have been straightforward as I’m already on PIP.

It took 18 MONTHS for them to pay him! And that was after numerous phone calls. In the end we got our MP involved. It was one year after he stopped being eligible as he got a job which took him over the earnings limit. So at the time we really needed the extra income, he got NOTHING!