how will studying with the open university affect our benefit if at all??

[MissTired]

we currently claim various benefits, i get carers allowance - my son gets dla, my partner claims job seeker allowance and get that for me too as a dependant due to the carers, we get child tax credits, housing benefit snd council tax benefit.

it seems i will get full course fees paid and about £265 i think it is towards things for studying ie books etc.

does this count as income, what do i do??

I think if you are classed as studying over 16 hours then your benefit gets stopped

oh no really, will have to check then, im classed as myt dp's dependant as a full time carer to my son who is disabled, so im legitimately not working rather than job seeking in eyes of the benefit peps will have to ring and ask!

I'm not sure about other benefits, but you definitely can't claim carers allowance if you're studying full time.

See: www.direct.gov.uk/en/CaringForSomeone/MoneyMatters/CarersAllowance/DG_10012525

"You cannot get Carer's Allowance if you are on a course of full-time education or you are on holiday from a course of full-time education.
Full-time education means 21 hours or more of supervised study each week undertaken through a school, college, university or similar educational establishment. This includes time spent on related exercises, experiments, projects or examinations."

sorry - linky

Oh - just realised it's the OU. Probably doesn't count then, as it's not supervised study.