So confused - Income support & carers allowance

Smiff28

Hi, I wondered if anyone could help me out here.

I'm 19 years of age and caring for my disabled mother, I'm receiving Carers allowance of £53.90 weekly but struggling to get by on just that so decided to claim for Income Support as well. This was at the start of november (i'm trying to add as many dates as possible to try and make it clearer) and they received my full claim on the 22nd of November. They rung me up on Friday for one last identification process (which i passed) and said i'd get a letter sent out during the following week.

On Monday the letter came and i was pleased but also confused to read:

Mr Smith

We can pay your claim from 22/08/2010. this is because you are a carer and we can backdate for 3 months. We received your fully completed claim on 22/11/10 so we can backdate you from this date

Thank You

That's word for word what i received, nice pidgin English eh? I was confused at first because I remember reading online they didn't backdate IS that far back but then when I read the Carer bit I assumed it was different for me and it must have been alright for me because of the circumstances of being a career as well as claiming for IS.

Well anyway, I check my bank account tonight and I see a sum of £408.00 sitting in there with the reference IS BGC, so obviously from income support, not Carers allowance as that is CA BGC. I was expecting a sum closer to £850 as that what 12 weeks worth of Income Support is.

The only other conclusion I can come to is that my IS is only £34 a week as 408/12 = 34. My reasoning being that i've qualified for only that (as opposed to the 51 quid) with one of my answers to the questions but I'm sure the guy on phone the first time round said I was due the full amount weekly as i've never worked and haven't got any savings over 16k.

I know this is vague and i'm probably best ringing them up to ask but I don't really want to make an idiot of myself just in case and wanted to see if a) they really do backdate IS 3 months b)if does this look and sound like a mistake on their part to the more qualified members on here and c) Income Support can actually be £34 a month (i haven't seen it mentioned anywhere online) or d) It's all ok and this is just half of the payment (or something far-fetched like that!)
OR could it be that they've backdated it for a month (like i originally read) but the income support + the carers premium I think i'm due all adds up to that 408 lump sum?

Also another thing, would I be able to find out if I did ring up or is it just best waiting for the letter? I remember the one I got with the backdated CA explained all. Argh it's so confusing!
I can't work it out and as you can see by the time of the post, it's making me lose sleep trying to figure it all out!

Thank you very much in advance for any help you can offer.

FactualGnome

As far as i'm aware if you had an entitlement you can backdate for 3 months, which you did as you are a carer, Carers Allowance is taken into account against Income Support, But you should also get a Carer Premium, that is why i presume you dont have the Full amount.

Smiff28

Thanks for the quick response.

Still kind of confused though, what will I get weekly from now on then? And will I get any more or is that it in terms of back dating?

cheers again.

pcombo

Well my income support is £28 a week which is paid every 2 weeks £56. And £53.90 a week carers.

DX2

Smiff28 wrote: »

Thanks for the quick response.

Still kind of confused though, what will I get weekly from now on then? And will I get any more or is that it in terms of back dating?

cheers again.

They deduct your CA from your IS, so it sounds about right.

Smiff28

Right cheers, didn't think they did but obviously they do.

Still none the wiser as to what I'll be getting but it will be a nice surprise come Friday.

DX2

IS under 25 = £51.85 + Carers premium = £30.05 = £81.90 - £53.90 CA = £28 per week IS

Smiff28

I see. Thanks very much.

Problem solved! That was really burning my head out, I take it 'thanks' are the rep system for this forum so 'thanks' all round.