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?

Don't forget to add, any money you receive will be deducted out of your universal credit. At the full amount not 0.55 per £1 like a job 😬

Sorry haven't read all the replies so apologies if this has been mentioned.
Depending on where you live you may be able to claim direct payments from social services for your mum.
She would have to qualify via their needs assessment and be under the financial threshold.
If she qualified she would recieve the direct payments and then pay you as her carer for however many hours she needs (acording to her assessment)
Worth having a look at your local authority website.
Also if your mum is above the financial threshold in savings maybe have a chat to her about paying you for your care, but be careful here that she has capacity to fully understand it all.

If you had a ltd company and paid yourself the limit for your hours then would that work?

Something else I don't get is that only one person can claim carers allowance for a person.
My son requires 24 hour care and will do for the rest of his life.
That's 168 hours a week.
But they will only pay carers allowance for one person to look after him for 35 hours a week.
A big difference.
Obviously I don't expect someone to be paid for the whole 168 hours a week but I would have expected more than 35 hours.
My husband can't get a part time job to top up his carers allowance because he has to be available to look after our son all the time.

I get carer's allowance and I didn't even ask for it because I didn't know it existed. A nice lady from some gouvernment acency called me up due to a demand to change SEN provision for my son. She asked if I worked and I laughed. I would have been fired if I had a job with ds being in and out of school needing assistance with everything except physical stuff due to his autism. He was 13 at the time and the lady told me I should get carer"s allowance so that was nice. A shame I didn't know that many years ago😄 but since DH has a decent salary and we're quite frugal I never thought of this.

Don't forget pension contributions can be used to keep your earnings down- it might well work out for you (i am in similar boat and have done this for yearS)

i currently work 20h and care about 70-90h for 2 people with high care needs. It just means people like me never get a break. The government absolutely doesn't give a shit about carers.

The carers allowance isn’t means tested against household income, if you are low income you would be eligible for uc as well

Family/friends carers are incredibly undervalued. In countries where family do care for their family often have a breadwinner system where the carer works part time or not at all, they usually have a family system that supports the carers too. In the UK it doesn't work that way. Over the past decade I've worked two full time jobs for much of that time and provided care for several people with really challenging issues. No one helps.

A couple of years ago I had been trying to get SS involved because the issues had progressed way beyond my capabilities. The police had been called for one and they contacted SS who then decided to call me to tell me I needed to do more. I firmly declined to do one thing more, told them they'd left me trying to cope with issues I don't understand leading to challenging behaviour I cannot reasonably deal with I felt ashamed but I had to refuse to help them to get any help for them although having other people visiting them causes just as many issues and the carers are on the phone daily asking for more things. Even when they went into a care home, it still came with additional work, it was never ending slices of daily shit on toast.

I was recently blocked in a shop door way by a chugger for one of the charities I'd asked for help (and told nothing in my area). I don't often feel sorry for chuggers but I did manage to give them a good piece of my mind very loudly before they moved ot of my way.

On top of that I still need to live, run a house, and as the only income earner (no partner) it's quite a challenge because caring for people comes with a cost. The stupidly low income you are allowed plus carers doesn't cut it, I can't claim benefits because I earn too much, relying on UC who then cut the benefit because CA is classed as income, it's not enough to live on. CA has never been any different it always had an effect on other benefits.

So that the old line of oh in other countries it's a privilidge to care for your family, yes it is, but you have to have a family to support you all in order to provide care and especially for challenging issues. If you don't have that support for income, emotionally, physically it's a horrendous slog you constantly feel guilty about begrudging. All for £81 a week only some can claim.

Can your mum claim attendance allowance and perhaps cover some of your expenses of caring for her that way, as well as your carer's allowance?

The person cared for has to have AA for the carer to claim CA already. AA is not for carers it's for additional expenses attending appointments etc.

I worked for a short time in DWP for my sins

True, but if the older person being cared for is travelling in their daughter's car to appointments, the daughter is the one incurring the cost. I don't claim CA but my mum gets AA and insists on reimbursing me for any costs associated with stuff we need for her illness, even though I don't ask for it.

That's fair enough when it is used to what it is intended for.

Carers allowance is deducted £4£ off a universal credit claim. It’s an overlapping benefit not an addition. If claiming UV you can get carers element added on which is £190 something. It also removes your work requirement if you have the carers element. So you don’t have to work but any work you do is subject to deductions from your UC award.

Also to claim carers allowance the person being carers for needs to be claiming either PIP or attendance allowance. So that paperwork needs completing as well if they don’t claim already.

YANBU to be upset at the system.
YABU to be shocked by it. Carers have been getting a very poor deal for a very long time and have been very vocal about it. Unfortunately nobody has paid attention to it because they are too damned knackered to be able to put up much of a fight about it.

When my daughter was younger, I wanted to give up my job because it was too difficult to provide care for her and work full time, given the amount of doctor’s appointments, meetings, therapies etc she needed. The government decided that my time to do that was worth buttons. But, they would throw more money at me to be able to put her in nursery, where she couldn’t fully get what she needed.

No government have ever cared enough about disabled people and their carers.

No it isn’t. The 35 hour rule has always been there. If people claim the allowance whilst working more than 35 hours, it’s fraudulent and is no different to fraudulently claiming any other benefit. They don’t make other benefits harder to get just because of fraud, but time and time again they tighten rules and make it harder to get any disability related benefit.

The fraud rate on Carer’s allowance is around 3%, £4million.
The fraud rate on universal credit is nearly 11%, £5.66 billion.

I know which one I’d be targeting.

I am a carer, but about to leave work to become a full time carer for the foreseeable.

I already get the carers element of UC. So it seems that there is no point applying for carers allowance as UC will just take all the money? So maybe just keeping the carers element of UC and then applying for carer's credit for my pension might be a lot easier?

Very shit system.
they pay you even when you earn over the threshold so you have to worry about paying it back some day.
they take away the other persons benefits in some circumstances, even though the tiny amount of carers allowance is for you to live and nothing to do with paying for the person.

if course you can. Many people need 24/7 care. there are 168h per week. Even if you allocate 56h for sleeping, it still leave 112h. I work 20h and care 70-90 hours on top. Unpaid carers have ridiculously long weeks and most work far more than the measly 35h employees have to deliver. Disabled people's disability does just run through office hours. Your post is just hugely ignorant. You clearly never cared for someone yourself and hence don't know how relentless it is. The government min criteria for CA is 35h per week but most carers deliver far more and if you care for multiple people, you still only qualify for 1 set of carers allowance. Educate yourself before posting nonsense.

You do realise people provide care at night too? Without working full time there are still 130 odd hours left in a week.

Yep

MN "if you cant afford to live in the town you grew up in then move. Dont be so entitled"
Also MN "why arent you available to care for your elderly parents. dont be so selfish"

You’re best off not having a second income in their eyes.

You should also see if you can move your tax allowance to your husband so he pays less tax and brings home more.

The main purpose of CA is to ensure that NI contributions are made which is why it is only paid to people below State Pension age.

Of course if we were paid at NLW rates of £11.44, we should be getting over £400 per week. At the current rate, the 35 hours works out at £2.34 per hour. That shows how much we are valued, especially as the majority of family carers do many more hours than this.

It is also nigh on impossible to get any help or support.

@MagicPharmacist has your mother had her benefits checked since your dad died? If she gets pension credit and attendance allowance she might lose some or all of this if you claim carers allowance for her.

I know 2 people who get Carers Allowance and do fuck all for it. They don’t live with the relatives and they visit maybe once a week. That’s it. Pisses me off that lazy individuals can get £80+ a week for doing nothing.
I know this wasn’t the point of the post…