My brother wants to claim carers allowance for my grandad

[MissCooCooMcgoo]

But does no caring!

He is on universal credit and messaged me today to ask if grandad gets any benefits so that he can put himself down as his carer!!!!

My grandad has daily carers for personal needs once a day, I do all his paperwork and doctor stuff, deal with the DWP etc with an LPA for health and welfare and finances. He has private cleaners monthly to clean his house.

All my brother does is pop up once a week to take a bit of shopping for him and have a cup of tea with him for an hour.

I feel so angry. I do all the heavy lifting, I've organised all the fucking paperwork and paid all the fees for things etc.

Is there any way I can stop him claiming to be his carer? I am so tempted to just dump everything at his door but that would be so unfair on my grandad and he wouldn't get looked after properly.

Reply - Hi DBro - I've already made DWp aware of caring situation. You can't claim it as you have to show 35 plus hours a week care. Then send links to people in news being imprisoned for not claiming in correctly

This

But how do I make dwp aware of the situation?

'You have to be doing 35 hours of caring so I'll cancel the carers then, grandad will be so pleased that your going to be spending 35 hours a week with him😄'
He'll soon change his mind 🤬

If your brother makes a claim for carers allowance then your grandad would be notified by letter that a claim had been submitted, so he ( or you on his behalf) could then call carers allowance unit and make it clear that he is making a fraudulent claim and does not provide 35 hours of care per week. If your grandad receives pension credit and is receiving a disability benefit so getting a severe disability premium on his pension credit claim then he will lose that premium if anyone claims carers allowance for looking after him. This would be a loss of around £85 a week potentially so he does need to be careful. Please check carefully what benefits your grandad receives.
Your brother is likely doing this to get out of job centre appointments asking him to look for work as he would have no work commitments on UC if he is classed as a carer. In my line of work I see many trying to do this. Things like being on call in case of problems and supervision can class as caring, it doesn't need to be actual 35 hours of hands on caring but unfortunately it is abused somewhat. then you get others caring for double or more of those hours.

Sorry, I pressed the wrong button and voted you as unreasonable, which you absolutely are not. Your brother sounds like a lazy, entitled arse!

Interesting that grandad would get a letter. How tf did he (B) think he was going to get that past him?

Grandad opens his own post and is still capable (I just support because at 97, who wants to deal with the bullshit of paperwork and phone calls)

He would not be happy about it because he knows I do so much more for him.

If grandad get any benefits they can be reduced by the amount of the carers allowance.

Carers Allowance is also deducted from the amount of UC received. Although he will get an extra Carers element in his UC this less than the amount of Carers Allowance so his UC will be reduced.

Of course if he is only doing it to stop having to look for work then he may not care.

Reply saying, grandad has carers for x hours per day, so unless you are going to take that over, you getting the carers allowance is not possible.

Sorry that wasn't clear. I meant the amount of UC your brother will receive.

He will get more UC overall though than he is currently getting. the carer element is added and carers allowance deducted in full as you say but overall he would be around £200 a month better off and no work commitments.

Yes it's odd if he thinks your grandad wouldn't know about him making a claim. Carers allowance department or UC do absolutely no checks on what caring is done. It's just assumed that if someone is disabled enough to claim the disability benefit then it is reasonable to think someone is providing 35 hours of care a week. I do think carers allowance is a hugely abused benefit by many but then on the other hand there are others who are on call 24/7 for disabled children or parents and it's just the same ate for all. I think there should be different rates although probably would be hard to assess and administer !

I'm so angry that he'd want to use my grandads advanced age and health needs to his advantage like this 😡

You don’t have to show it at all though so this won’t work.

citizens advice to me not to claim carers as my parent would lose attendance allowance.

so i’d tell your brother that he can’t claim as it’s one or the other and attendance allowance is already being paid to grandpa so bro cannot claim carers allowance end of.

This is not true at all. Attendance Allowance is not affected . It is if the cared for person gets a severe disability premium on Pension credit then that is affected not Attendance Allowance. If citizens advice really did tell you this then someone needs some intensive re-training !

I'm my son's carer and reapplied a few years ago. He never got a letter.

If you want to stop him, the only way would be to notify carers allowance that there might be a fraudulent attempt to be a carer. Otherwise, he could apply, your grandad probably won't get a letter and nobody has to prove caring for 35 hours. Don't tell him nonsense like that or he will just counter it. Plenty of people get it just for what he's doing - the shopping, etc.

Have you told your brother this? Have you pointed out that he doesn’t spend enough time caring for him to be classed as a carer?

oh right, interesting.

i know for a fact i got told not to claim Carers because it would negatively affect one of her benefits but perhaps ive got the affected benefit name wrong.
i dont think so though.
i honestly think the CAB told us that. It doesn’t matter though as i dont spend that much time there. five hours a day is a lot of time! im sure there are many people who do an hour or two a day for a relative and think they are entitled to it!

Tell him you’re already claiming carer’s allowance as you actually do all the caring.

It's £83 a week. About 6-7 hours at minimum wage. I'd say that's fair for doing his shopping and sitting with him a bit.

It's not fair for me who does 24/7 caring.

But the criteria for claiming carers allowance is providing 35 hours of care a week. This can be done by supervision or just being on call. If he's not providing 35 hours of care then it's a fraudulent claim. But as said previously no one ever checks up. I' m sure there are many many elderley people letting kids or grandkids claim it for a few hours caring a week to stop them being hassled by the job centre especially given the current youth unemployment rates.

Carers allowance needs looking at, it seems easy to abuse it