worried to death!!!!

hunterforce

hi people
Please can anyone shed any light on what may happen:-

Im married to a wonderful lady with 3 children i have my disabled mother living with us as well now some years ago (8 years approx) my wife gave birth to our daughter, but at the time was looking after my disabled mother, so we applied for carers allowance and was awarded £203 a month for looking after her, in due cause we went on to have another 2 children.
After a little while my wife found a part time job working 2 days a week which was great as it allowed her to get out the house for a while and gave me bonding time with the children on my 2 days off a week.

Ok moving on 5 years to back end of last year, my wife gets a letter from DWP telling her she was being investigated for benefit Freud :O how we thought????
Upon looking into the details we noticed she was NOW earning some £28 over the max limit she was allowed to earn on the carers allowance, where she had slight increases each year at work, this has now taken her over the limit, and has been for the last 5 or so years.
Mortified she called them right away and stopped any further payments coming onto us, although the care still continued for my mother, (she is now becoming house bound thus having to more and more as time goes on)
He boss at work has been very understanding and has kept her in the loop as to whats happening and all the forms he has had to fill out.
In March this year she had a interview under caution, which was to say the least in human but all in all went well, them in May we get a letter telling us that she owes around £11000 and please pay in the next 14 days well as you can imagine we dont just have £11000 at all so a call was made and an agreement was set up for £100 per month.
All done we thought NOPE!!!!!
Her boss called her in the other day and advised they had been on the phone again wanting to know if all the forms he had filled out was in his writing and wanted more info, asking why they advised that they were looking to take further action against her :O
The error was a total over site, she has not even had as much as a parking ticket in her life and the stress this is bringing on to her as well as my mother is imense!!!!
Thing is i just dont know whats gonna happen, she has it in her head that now she will get a prison sentence over this.
I just dont know where to go with all this, shes now off work with stress and is in a real down mood all the time panicking as to what may happen.
We have no issues in paying back the money at all, OK we should have notified them for the small increases she was getting from work, and the odd few days she worked, but didn't as i have said before a total over site on our behalf.
she is not a fraudsters never has been and never will be, she has worked all her able life and has never been in any form of trouble at all, i just hate this and the effects its having on our family.

Any advise on this situation would be a great comfort

Regards
T

MrsE_2

I have no advice for you - sorry.

But do they expect your wife to care for your mum 5 days a week & you on the other 2 days per week & they make no contribution?

If so whats in it for you?

If they took your mum into residential care it would cost them £500 a week.

Sam____2

That's the rules though and they are there for a reason, just because you don't agree with them doesn't make it right to commit benefit fraud, never fails to amaze me that whenever people get caught, it was always a genuine mistake or oversight!
The threshold for earnings will have been included in the paperwork your wife completed when she asked to be paid carers allowance.

SuziQ

MrsE wrote: »

I have no advice for you - sorry.

But do they expect your wife to care for your mum 5 days a week & you on the other 2 days per week & they make no contribution?

If so whats in it for you?

If they took your mum into residential care it would cost them £500 a week.

I have to say I totally agree. Yer, she made a mistake but the figures of her over-earnings are relatively small-I think it is a disgrace. I would say go to see your MP-maybe they could make a test case out of this, but my own experience is that they say the rules are the rules. An oversight is totally different to fraud-she is looking after family, saving the govt hundreds if not thousands but beyond that is that a family member is getting loving care in a home setting-how would the local authority react if she now said 'you have made me ill, I am now no longer well enough to care for her?'

It does seem to me that they like to really cane the easy targets in these situations, when I fel they are wasting public funds in pursuing this-I am so sorry.

SuziQ

Sam___ wrote: »

The threshold for earnings will have been included in the paperwork your wife completed when she asked to be paid carers allowance.

Maybe so but I would guess that many people get caught out when they get gradually increases in earnings like this and even you must see that there are genuine cases where people make honest but regrettable mistakes? I've certainly made mistakes in life-fortunately for me they have never been in filling out government forms, as far as I know (fingers crossed!) As a carer myself I know how hard it is and generally thankless.

hunterforce

I know

Im not that sort of person but if i said to my mum ok enough out you go, they would have to house her.
now she has arthritis of the hips knees and spine she has a heart condition sleep apnia open ulsers diabetis amounst other things
Just really makes my blood boil, we try our hardest and we get kicked at every point!!!
when others come into the country and the goverment throw houses money free health care etc etc at them!!!!

AnxiousMum

hunterforce wrote: »

when others come into the country and the goverment throw houses money free health care etc etc at them!!!!

Was just about to come on here with a useful post, and read your comment above. Being an immigrant, who works damned hard for every penny I earn, whose OH is an immigrant who works damned hard educating your children......raising children who are a credit to the communities they belong in.......I won't bother. After all.....we're just immigrants right?

kazzah60

Sam___ wrote: »

That's the rules though and they are there for a reason, just because you don't agree with them doesn't make it right to commit benefit fraud, never fails to amaze me that whenever people get caught, it was always a genuine mistake or oversight!
The threshold for earnings will have been included in the paperwork your wife completed when she asked to be paid carers allowance.

my friend claims carers allowance for caring for my ds1 who has ASD
she takes him most weekends and gives us a bit of respite also she looks after him most mornings and evenings - she is the only person other than us who understands him and who he is happy to be left with.



I know for a FACT that every year she gets a notification of the earnings limit and and a form to complete asking her if anything has changed -

• does she have paid employment ?
• if she does have paid employment she needs to send wage slips
• does she still care for the person named on the form?
• does she wish to claim any additional allowance for her dependents ( we don't even know that that one means!)?

So I am struggling to understand how the carers allowance team failed to send your wife the same update requests as my friend receives.
I cannot believe that in EIGHT years your wife has not received so much as one request for confirmation of her eligibility to claim CA

mandi

Hi ,

It might be a good idea if your wife takes some legal advice from a solicitor . I really don't think for one second that she will be sent to prison , especially as you have 3 children & an elderly parent to look after .

If she sees a solicitor and has to go for a futher interveiw her solicitor can represent her .

hunterforce

AnxiousMum wrote: »

Was just about to come on here with a useful post, and read your comment above. Being an immigrant, who works damned hard for every penny I earn, whose OH is an immigrant who works damned hard educating your children......raising children who are a credit to the communities they belong in.......I won't bother. After all.....we're just immigrants right?

For the hard working people of this great nation i am all for immigrants or not its the dam lazy so and so's that do jack all day and expecting us to fund it for them, im sorry if i offended you but it was not my intention!!

hunterforce

kazzah60 wrote: »

my friend claims carers allowance for caring for my ds1 who has ASD
she takes him most weekends and gives us a bit of respite also she looks after him most mornings and evenings - she is the only person other than us who understands him and who he is happy to be left with.



I know for a FACT that every year she gets a notification of the earnings limit and and a form to complete asking her if anything has changed -

• does she have paid employment ?
• if she does have paid employment she needs to send wage slips
• does she still care for the person named on the form?
• does she wish to claim any additional allowance for her dependents ( we don't even know that that one means!)?

So I am struggling to understand how the carers allowance team failed to send your wife the same update requests as my friend receives.
I cannot believe that in EIGHT years your wife has not received so much as one request for confirmation of her eligibility to claim CA

She got a form like that to fill out a few years back , all filled out and sent back, didnt hear a thing untill this happened