Does this Universal Credit amount sound wrong?

[FryingPanWithJam]

Total amount in UC is £2421.40 a month

Income is £1950 a month, Partner. I’m unemployed as a carer, I get carers allowance

Two kids on higher rates of DLA

Rent is £930

I really, really worry about being overpaid! I wasn’t even aware I could claim it until someone mentioned it at a support group. I am really shocked

Nonsense, one can be capable of doing what's needed as a Carer while lacking the capacity to do work. It happens all the time.

A Carer in the context of benefits is somebody who spends at least 35 hours a week (so five hours a day) looking after somebody who gets a qualifying benefit like DLA, PIP or Attendance Allowance.

The role could include physically helping them, for example with washing and dressing, changing incontinence pads, stopping them wandering off and coming to harm etc.

The charities are reporting on research undertaken by universities.

If the big corporations and coffee shops such as Costa paid there fair share of taxes, then surely that would help the economy. CEOs being paid huge bonuses for failure, the list goes on.

Why doesn’t labour just make them then? And the ‘big corporations’ still need working employees.

How can you work for 35 hours a week as a carer but not in conventional employment?

Because 35hrs as a Carer as defined for Carers Allowance/Carer Element is in bitesize chunks across, potentially, 24 hours not 9-5.

so what you are basically saying: if you are a carers and look after someone 35h/per week, you cannot become disabled. It's the perfect indemnity insurance. What do you recons happens if a carers (even though in your tiny imagination this isn't possible) becomes disabled? Who do you think will look after the disabled person? Genuine question???

also, have you considered that not all disabilities look the same and the person they care for has a different level of need to what they need themselves?

But please tell us first who you think will take over the care if the carer develops care needs!

@Blueybanditbingochilli Christ you spout some nonsense.

Don't these kids spend any time at school?

A) there are thousands of DC that do not have an educational placement because of their SEN.
B) even if they do attend school, 38 hours does not cover all the time not spent at school.

Many children with disabilities don't have school places and even if they do, a lot need 24/7 care. Even after spending 30h in school, there are still 138h in the week left when they aren't.

.my youngest ( severe epilepsy , needs suction oxygen , tube feeding etc ) only attends 8 hrs a week at present ( going up.to 12 next year) . As his complex medical needs do not evaporate when he arrives on school ground he gets funding from Continuing Health Care to support him for those few hours in school.because he needs a nurse or a specialist carer to go with him.It took 3 years to fight to get these few hours . Other than that I am delivering the nursing care at home basically single handedly . No doubt some will be along to complain about the expense involved in that next but it is impossible for some children to attend without specialist support and teachers are not able to deliver all the medical interventions required.
So the reality fir families with complex needs children is that they don't even get the school day to unwind because organising all equipment and meds to go with them to school and transporting them there and back leaves about 3 hours on a school day when they do attend. And even then I have to be on call to rush to get him if any emergencies arise ( quite a regular occurance).
This is just the reality of life with complex children if you want them to have a good quality of life and experience as much as possible when they are well.
So it makes me despair when people comment about people getting a job during school hours with no idea at all of what families are dealing with day to day.

@flapjackfairy it is a whole other matter, often takes an appeal and won’t be in place immediately, but have you thought about pursuing some provision to be delivered otherwise than at school as well as part time school? I have 2 DSs with EOTAS that some here would be aghast at the cost of because benefits for a disabled household are a drop in the ocean in comparison.

No ! never heard if this. please enlighten me !

@flapjackfairy EOTAS/EOTIS is Education Otherwise Than At/In School. It is where it is inappropriate for provision to be made in a school. Comes under section 61 of the Children and Families Act 2014. For those with EOTAS/EOTIS packages, section I of their EHCP is blank and all the provision is delivered via a bespoke package outside of school. But it is not Elective Home Education because the LA remains responsible for DC and their provision. Every package is bespoke to the individual child or young person’s needs.

Instead of full EOTAS/EOTIS packages, some DC have part of their education delivered in a school and part otherwise than at school. This is not EHE, nor is it flexi-schooling. The school is still named in section I, but the provision otherwise than at school is set out in F of the EHCP and the LA remain responsible.

ooh that's interesting. Thankyou I will have a look at that.

@flapjackfairy a few of us on the Goose & Carrot pub thread on SN Chat have DC with EOTAS if you want to join us.

It was a Tory thong yes but I don't see the labour prime minister doing a U turn. Do you?

thankyou x

ooh I love a Tory thong ! 😀
Seriously I assume you mean the voucher scheme? . I participated in the online consultation and even that was meant to deter real feedback as it was so long. What a shocker! It's almost as if they want disabled folks and their families to be unable to navigate the process

I agree with OP that it will be incredibly hard to administer and would likely result in an expensive system that created more issues than it solved but we shall have to see what Labour decide on that I guess.

So the solution is?

To remove all benefits unless in the severest of all cases like OPs?

20 week abnormality scan and if there's a disability, then abort.

And if the child is born disabled (and not picked up during pregnancy)? What then, or if the disability isn't found until later?

What if someone develops a disability throughout their lifetime through illness or an accident? Euthanasia? Like Canada who suggested this to homeless people and a paralympic athlete?

Some previous comments seem to suggest something must be done, and we cannot continue like this.

Are we seriously going to remove all financial support for disabled children and disabled people and offer abortion and euthanasia (voluntary or otherwise).

Very slippery slope, hope life treats you kind and no bad luck befalls you or your family...where you, your partner, your child or loved one finds themselves disabled and instead of care, and financial support you're told that costs too much, it's a burden and your offered euthanasia instead....

So sorry op 😞

This is from a previous thread:

Is your household contributing net tax ?

Following on from the awful disabled people are a drain on society threads...

For those that have children, have you considered this?

Roughly 55-60% of all households aren't net contributors to tax.

That's not to say the households that don't make a net contribution are in receipt of benefits.

Having children entails the following:

(This is per child)

Maternity care on NHS/midwifes,
Birth/delivery £3000-10000,
Post Delivery Care,
Health Visitors,
Statutory Maternity Leave,
Free prescriptions during pregnancy and after birth for 1 year,
Child gets free eye tests, glasses, prescriptions, dentist until 16/18
Child benefit until 16-20
Free nursery hours £2000-7000 per
Free School Milk £30-40
Free school meals: £400-500
School is £7,690 per
Sixth form/college/higher education £4,843

Student loans for university £30,000-50,000+

Yes the loans are paid back, but the initial offset is footed by taxpayers. And around 27% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2022/23 will repay them in full. They forecast that after the 2022 reforms this would increase to 61% among new students from 2023/24.

So instead of looking to blame those who are disabled for being a drain, look elsewhere, and better yet, instead of the disabled, pensioners, the working poor...we should look towards those are govern us, avoid tax.

The UK pension is the lowest in Europe, our wages are low and have stagnanted, working rights and conditions have eroded.

The UK looks asset rich, but it's only a small number who are generating huge wealth for themselves. There are parts of the UK poorer than the poorest parts of Poland. In fact, Poland is predicted to be wealthier per person than the UK in just a few years.

Maternity care is awful, the NHS is broken and on its knees, social care is non existent.

We've had austerity for 14 years, then Brexit, then COVID. Our country is in desperate need of investment into our creeking infrastructure.

Over £119 billion in unpaid tax and 70p in every £100 paid in benefits is fraudulently claimed

Has anybody at any point said any of this, or did you just make it all up?

If it were that simple labour would just do it, wouldn’t they? I don’t believe they’re greedy or secretly in it for the rich - so what’s stopping them?

The fact is in a global economy which looks to attract investment you can’t crush people making large profits. I mean you can but investment would shrivel and we would end up worse than before after a good few years.

The main issue is more than 1 in 5 working age people are not working. And the claims for benefits just seem to endlessly spiral without any sign of levelling off. There’s only so much you can do with such a tiny number of taxpayers and so many dependents with ‘needs’.

Op was asked why she had 2 children and if the second child showed signs at 20 week scan of being disabled. Presumably, if they're had been any indication of disability at 20 weeks, op is supposed to have aborted her child.

Another poster posted:

We need to think hard and long about responsibility and how this works. We need to be realistic and we need to communicate this to the population. We all roll the dice when we have children and risk having disabled children that need lifelong care. If the state can't or won't pickup the costs of this then it will fall back to the parents and family.

...eventually they’ll be forced to reduce the payments or reduce the claimants and neither will be pretty."

Other posters have also said something along the lines of:

Something has to be done, things cannot continue like this...

How does one reduce or remove a disability?

If we cannot continue giving financial support, then what happens? No money for food, housing, warmth, medicine and medical equipment ?

Basically abort or cull the disabled.