It’s actually not even involving him in your finances, it’s involving him in his own. If he’s leaving school as far as Scots govt concerned he’s an adult.
From googling in relation to his age one possibility might be to switch the carers allowance to him (is that something you could do? NOT fraudulently is he able to provide care to his father?) and then you claim UC as unemployed currently? I’m not sure how the rules are affecting sole traders like yourself with the covid differences to claims.
I’m just trying to think how you may be able to juggle things to increase household income.
There’s also a young Carer grant - only available in Scotland which only requires the Carer to be providing 16 hours of care as opposed to the 35 hours for carers allowance. It’s only £300 a year but every little helps?
Another good reason to contact a LOCAL agency for advice on benefits is because it really does work differently in Scotland.
How long ago was he refused for DLA/pip? Did you have support in completing and submitting the claim?
Unfortunately a LOT of claims are initially refused - mine was. This is almost standard and shockingly dwp staff have been caught out by investigative journalists admitting that they aren’t necessarily refusing on the basis the claimant isn’t eligible but because it would make their target quotas look bad (they get in trouble if they accept too many claims within a certain time period) this is why THOUSANDS of claimants when they’ve challenged the refusals have had the decisions overturned.
I was in despair when my initial claim was refused. I was extremely ill at the time and had a young dd to consider.
I had an appointment with gp same day and ended up crying on her shoulder about it. She signposted me to a mh support group and they advised me this was not uncommon especially with mental illness and certain other conditions and signposted me to the welfare rights people.
I hold 2 degrees and have worked as a civil servant and wrongly thought I’d be fine doing the claim myself as a result. One thing I had taken from being a civil servant (and previous incompetent and unprofessional treatment by dwp) was to photocopy any forms to keep my own copy.
I took this into my first appointment with welfare rights and they were straight away able to point out loads of things I had neglected to include in the claim (I had wrongly thought I was only meant to include info pertaining to main reason for claim and had omitted everything to do with other mh issues and my physical disability which at that time wasn’t as bad as it is now)
She noticed my limp as I entered her office for starters and then when looking at the form noticed I hadn’t mentioned anything about the physical. There were also some things I’d omitted somewhat unconsciously due to embarrassment about them.
She helped me with the appeal, attended the next assessment with me, took notes very obviously during the assessment and my appeal was upheld and my claim backdated (which I really didn’t expect)
As I mentioned earlier I recently - well end of last year - has to claim pip as DLA claim was being ended.
I was very anxious at first but with help from welfare rights and some very well informed mn’ers too I put my claim in and was very pleasantly surprised to get awarded enhanced for both elements - having been just a few years earlier I couldn’t get higher rate DLA for either element.
Unfortunately there’s no consistency, it’s luck of the draw to a degree.
That’s why it is useful to get support from those who know how the system works AND who know how it works locally.