work after baby?

Oddgy

Hi - im not sure if ive posted in the right section but looking for some advice. My partners Statutory Mat Pay runs out end of this month. She doesnt have a job to return to due to taking Voluntary Redudency. Because her Mat Pay is finishing, we will loose £500 a month - too much to live without so she is intending to seek some part time work but we are not sure how this will affect us??

What i mean is, will she be able to claim JSA while she searches for a job, although she can only do part time as we can only find a carer to look after our child on a part time basis. We havent even looked into Child Care on full time basis as my Other half would like to look after our child majority of time, and the other thing, im sure it will be too costly.

I know i have gone off the point, my questions are can my partner claim JSA? And will they allow it as she can only look for part time work. And how many hours does she have to work on a part time basis?

Any ideas?
Thanks

DaisyFlower

You may want to change the wording of your post - using childcare isnt "giving your child away full time" and you may upset a lot of parents who use childcare.

If she took voluntary redundancy, she may not qualify for any benefits. However she could look into contribution based JSA which may be paid for 6 months. After that, its unlikely she will qualify for income based JSA as you are working.

OrkneyStar

DaisyFlower wrote: »

You may want to change the wording of your post - using childcare isnt "giving your child away full time" and you may upset a lot of parents who use childcare.

If she took voluntary redundancy, she may not qualify for any benefits. However she could look into contribution based JSA which may be paid for 6 months. After that, its unlikely she will qualify for income based JSA as you are working.

Daisy, I am sure the OP did not mean to cause offense, perhaps he just did not choose the correct words.
I agree with your advice on the JSA though.
Also perhaps your tax credits will increase (the Child or Working Variety), depending on your income of course.
If she does return to work and you need some sort of child care then tax credits may pay something toward this (through the Childcare element of WTC), again dependant on your household income. If you don't qualify for help with childcare costs through tax credits then you can check if your employer offers Childcare vouchers (basically a system where you get part of your salary each month as vouchers toward childcare and you don't pay tax, and possibly NI am not sure on that one, on them).
I understand where you are coming from as I did not return after my maternity leave ended. We lost £500 or so pcm from my wages on SMP (a lot more than that pcm if you consider my actual wage before SMP!) and only got a small increase in tax credits, this said I am happy to be at home with DS, even if watching the pennies a bit more these days!
hth

Oddgy

No i didnt mean it that way at all, just meaning that she isnt a career girl and would want to stay at home bringing our child up as much as poss. Some people who have children have really good careers and thus need to use child care to continue with their good career for their familys sake.

I didnt realise by taking voluntary redundency afftected her in this way, as they were going to make people redundent, and still did after she had taken voluntarily. She took voluntarily as she thought it would be easier to sort out when the time came to go back to work, as she would be going back for part time work instead of full time.

Not sure how the JSA works, but from what i can gather from what you say they will give her 6 months of this? Is it a cut off point if she fails to find work after 6 months? We are thinking about maybe 2 full days work out of 5 as the in law have agreed to look after our child. However as i said, i havent looked into child care so not sure if goverment can help with this one due to her obvious low wages she will be on, or whether it will be cheaper for her just to stay at home and look after our child full time.

OrkneyStar

Oddgy wrote: »

No i didnt mean it that way at all, just meaning that she isnt a career girl and would want to stay at home bringing our child up as much as poss. Some people who have children have really good careers and thus need to use child care to continue with their good career for their familys sake.

I didnt realise by taking voluntary redundency afftected her in this way, as they were going to make people redundent, and still did after she had taken voluntarily. She took voluntarily as she thought it would be easier to sort out when the time came to go back to work, as she would be going back for part time work instead of full time.

Not sure how the JSA works, but from what i can gather from what you say they will give her 6 months of this? Is it a cut off point if she fails to find work after 6 months? We are thinking about maybe 2 full days work out of 5 as the in law have agreed to look after our child. However as i said, i havent looked into child care so not sure if goverment can help with this one due to her obvious low wages she will be on, or whether it will be cheaper for her just to stay at home and look after our child full time.

Contribition based JSA only lasts 6 months. Income based would be longer, but with your salary (even if it was very low) she would not qualify for that.

Oddgy

Ok Thanks guys....

millie

When I claimed JSA (for a grand total of 6 weeks) I was not allowed to state I only wanted part time work. I had to pretend I was looking for a full time job or they would not pay me. That was 4 years ago so it may have changed since then.

LizzieS_2

Any redundancy payment could affect the JSA claim date.

For tax credits if your joint income goes over 21K, you will be on the £10pw minimum (after baby reaches 1), so you wouldn't receive 80% of childcare costs via tax credits, but depending on income you could still get some help.

As already mentioned, if tax credits is not an option for childcare (even if it is to a small extent), check your ability to get childcare vouchers from employers.

As the renewal packs are going out - remember to deduct the £100pw for SMP payments.

Entitledto.com is useful for working out when you are better off doing one thing or another.