Looking for advice please

[car1sberg]

Hello,

Like so many others right now, we have found ourselves in a tricky position financially given the current situation. It is as follows:

Own our own home. 3 children.

Me - on SMA until Sep (approx £550/month) I am on SMA rather than SMP as I don't have my old job to go back to afterwards so will be unemployed from Sep until I find something.
Husband - old job ended at end of April (salary was approx £37k) new one that had been lined up to begin now, now isn't until later this year - hopefully. We are therefore without his wage and with my SMA only.
We have applied for a 3 month mortgage break, and help with council tax support, (though haven't actually heard back about this yet despite it being over a month ago).
Are we entitled to other help? I expect we would be as our outgoings are considerably more than what's coming in and our savings won't last for months.
I am worried though that if we apply for some sort of financial help, that when my husband and I go back to work in Sep time (hopefully) and our income goes up that we would need to pay back any help we get? Would this be the case?
Years ago we were entitled to child tax credits and received them for around 3 months but then our salaries went over the threshold and we had to pay it all back which was a nightmare.
Any help would be much appreciated, thank you!

You will possibly be eligible for Universal Credit, but you mention savings, how much do you have at present?

@Rockchick1984 thanks for the reply. Around £1k in the bank.

You would most likely get some Universal credit. However maternity allowance is deducted pound for pound from UC. Assuming one of you is over 25 you would get £594.04 couples element, £281.25 for first child and £235.83 for second child, nothing for third child. So total of £1111.12 per month minus the £550 MA leaves approx. £561 UC.

Just to add also you would not need to pay it back.

Yes as pp said you'd get in the region of 5-600 from universal credit. The children would be entitled to free school meals - and apply ASAP. Then you'll get the £15 voucher per child.
Apply for the free milk fruits and veg plus vitamins for the baby, I think its about £6-8 a week too.
You'll then get more of the council tax reduced as well via uc.

@Babyroobs @Solomummy thank you for that, that's really helpful. So we'd just notify them when we plan to go back to work and the payments would stop, but we wouldn't need to pay it back? That's my main concern, it didn't seem to make sense last time, we only took what we were entitled to and then due to it being in the same tax year it all had to go back. UC is different then?
Would we be expected to use up the savings we do have first?
Thanks again

You can claim Uc and have up to 6k savings before the amount of Uc you receive is affected so no you don't need to use up the savings first. if you applied today it would be 5 weeks until your first payment. UC is based on real time so you should not end up with overpayments. If earnings increase to the point where you are no longer eligible for Uc you will just receive a zero award.

@Babyroobs so so helpful thank you.
We'll still struggle to cover the mortgage & bills with just over £1k per month coming in - though obviously the extra £5-600 of UC would be so much help. My parents had been going to give us some money to tide us over, which realistically we'll still need, it would obviously take us no where near the £6k you're allowed to have, would they not be able to do this though? Thanks again so much.