New working tax credit rules if you have a severely disabled child

[bigmama1302]

Can anyone advise me on how to start up and get some momentum for an e-petition? I've just had a letter from HMRC telling me that I'll lose working tax credit as of April this year unless I can up my hours to 24 hours a week or more. I have 5 kids, 4 at home - my youngest , who is 4 years old, collapsed just before she was 6 months old following an encephalitic episode and is now hypotonic, can't walk or talk and is doubly incontinent. As a result of that, I've had to reduce my hours to 3 days a week, my husband has given up his job and is receipt of Carer's Allowance for her. I work in a public sector department which is in the process of getting rid of as many staff as they can through voluntary redundancy and early retirement, so upping my hours is not an option. Given my youngest daughters needs, my husband getting work is not an option, me upping my hours is an impossibility...The letter I got states that as a couple, if he is in receipt of DLA we would be exempt and entitled to the old 16 hours rule....but surely if you have a child who is in receipt of the highest rate of DLA and the non-working parent is getting (a whole £53 a week!) DLA this can't be right? At current extimates, not only am I losing 3-5% a year of my income due to the public sector pay freeze, I'm now going to lose £4,000 a year WTC on a part-time wage. Feel like I might as well just give up at the moment to be honest...

And if carers were exempt this thread wouldn't exist...don't understand lisad123's post? Clearly they're not ...!

apparently you are not allowed to be a disabaled person and a carer

If you are self employed and not receiving an income as long as you spend the hours looking for work for your business etc then those hours count as being employed and if business makes a loss believe you can deduct that from the non self employed partners wages. Not a hundred percent sure on this though but might be worth checking out and thinking about what you or dh might like to do.

Big mama I'm not trying to be mean or unkind. But a standard carer is exspent from this new rule. If they are alone parent they get carers, and therefore can't work the 16 hours. If a married couple, only one has to cover the 24 hours, therefore the carer of that couple doesn't have to work.

However, carers is classed as an income by ctc, so would like to know how many hours they will account for that!!

Good point about Carers and hours

Do you actually have to be in receipt of Carers Allowance to be exempt? DH works 30 + hours but I don't work at all. My DS gets HRM / HRC. Because of this he also gets the severe disability component of tax credits.

Because Carers IS classed as taxable income and all that would happen (checked with the calculator) if I claimed it was that the disability component / overall tax credit award would be reduced, I have never bothered.

If I have to claim from April there's going to be a cock-up / overpayment I just know it. Or will the fact that DS gets the DLA at the higher rate be enough for the new rules?

I don't think it matters as long as your covering 24 hours in the household, that is for every family DLA or not.
If needed carers only takes 2 weeks to sort out

I really want to know how they will work out carers hours now!! That might be a way round it op.

Under PIP those on MRC will be moved to the lower rate and Carers Allowance will cease. So you might be caring for someone with quadriplegia, dementia, severe MH issues but if you dont get CA you will have to go to work.

Might be lisad123 - I hope so. These reforms are disgraceful. I've frothed to my MP and have received absolutely dreadful responses including one in support of PIP mentioning millions of pounds wasted on unnecessary life-time awards I'm going to send him lots of links to the fraud and error rate after half-term.

It is awful that so many people have had such unhelpful responces from their local MP. We recently had to contact ours for a DLA related issue and she couldn't have been more helpful. She spoke with Maria Miller (Minister for Disabled People) about matter relating to our case and Ms Miller wasn't aware this was happening. Things got moving pretty quickly after that! I wonder if you could contact her directly outlining your circumstances ? Or am I just being naive !?!

Mine had a form letter from Maria Miller attached which said that this campaign was based on false assumptions and incorrect information even after the Lords agreed that the time-scales and consultations were inadequate.

I wasn't the only person to get one either.

Glad she was helpful in your situation though

They don't count the hours that my husband puts in to get his Carers Allowance - if they did he'd be on about 18 hours a day, as my wee munchin has decided to wake up at 2.30am and not go back to sleep until after 9pm. Add in the other sprogs and we're on about 3 hours a night interrupted sleep each. Work that out on minimum pay and we'd be totally quids in! As I explained, because my unstable disc is intermittent there's absolutely no chance of me getting DLA (on the grounds, according to them, that I can cook a meal from scratch if all the ingredients are in front of me from scratch - although quite how the DWP think food magically appears on a counter in front of you escapes me...) - but even if I could get it it wouldn't make any difference, because the new rules are that the non-working parent has to be in receipt of it before the 16 hour rule works if you're not a single parent (and that's no offence to single parents at all - been there, seen it, done it 28 years ago - my point is it was easier to bring up 1 for a couple of years on my own than try and deal with 4 in a couple with this level of stress...) :(