really confused

sianb84

My partner has just been told he is entitled to carers allowance from 1/11/2010 but as I received an income support payment on 2/11/2010 they can't pay until 3/1/2011 when they have spoken to income support.

Since 2/11/2010 I have had one payment of income support (yesterday) which is back payment after the change in circumstance so will take into account my partner getting carers allowance.

Carers allowance people had to ring income support to say my partner was now getting carers so why didn't they find out then what period I had already been paid for?

Basically we don't find out how much carers my partner is entitled to until January which means we can't claim housing benefit until January as the forms what to know how much he is getting.

We have no idea how much income support we will be getting or how much carers. Since the change in circumstances I have spoken to 3 different people at income support, 2 of whom couldn't organise a !!!! up in a brewery!

DX2

Carers is a set amount for everyone £53.90 per week, which they deduct from your IS claim.

merlin68

So you should be getting what i'm getting which is £118 income support and 53.90 carers allowance. As you will be entilted to the dissability premium on the income support.

sianb84

from looking at the money they put in my account yesterday it has gone down a lot more than the £53.90 a week. It is now less than the standard £102 a week for a couple and thats with the extra for me being disabled!

I fail to see how it can take another month to speak to income support to find out I received 2 days worth of extra income support when it should have been carers allowance. By the time we hear what is going on with carers it will have been 2 months.

We have already had a month of not knowing anything and now we have another month until we find out by which time I will be about to give birth and then it all changes yet again.

All I can say is thank god we had our heads screwed on and put a bit of money aside to ensure while benefits were sorted we could afford to pay bills and food.

sianb84

we got £345 yesterday to cover the money they owe us from last payment on 2/11/2010.

I don't know if it was lower because my partner works part time so earns £96 a week. I haven't been told anything or received any letters about anything. I had to chase them to find out that the claim had been suspended while they waited for more information as the last i heard was on 5/11/2010 stating I would get £107 a week and then nothing ever appeared in my account. This letter arrived a few days after I told them of the changes and arrived at the same time as forms they wanted filling in.

The guy I spoke to when trying to change our circumstances didn't have a clue what he was doing and then when I rung the other day the guy I spoke to again didn't have a clue what he was doing - he only even answered as he pressed the wrong button!

sianb84

I think what is frustrating is all the stress it is causing and damage to my health could be avoid by a simple bit of communication between departments and people on the phones who know what they are doing (and the criteria for the benefits!)

Indie_Kid

sianb84 wrote: »

from looking at the money they put in my account yesterday it has gone down a lot more than the £53.90 a week. It is now less than the standard £102 a week for a couple and thats with the extra for me being disabled!

Carers allowance is deducted from IS.

sianb84

sh1305 wrote: »

Carers allowance is deducted from IS.

I know, however the amount it has gone down is a lot more than carers allowance. Also no carers allowance is going to be paid until january as they said they need to speak to income support as I received 2 days worth of extra income support at the beginning of november when we should have had carers instead. Surely it doesn't take another month to make a 2 minute phone call when they could have easily done that when they spoke to income support the first time.

merlin68

With his wages and the carers allowance it will probably only be about £12 a week income support. When the baby is due you need to claim child benefit £20 a week then you can claim child tax credits of £54 a week.

DX2

sianb84 wrote: »

we got £345 yesterday to cover the money they owe us from last payment on 2/11/2010.

I don't know if it was lower because my partner works part time so earns £96 a week. I haven't been told anything or received any letters about anything. I had to chase them to find out that the claim had been suspended while they waited for more information as the last i heard was on 5/11/2010 stating I would get £107 a week and then nothing ever appeared in my account. This letter arrived a few days after I told them of the changes and arrived at the same time as forms they wanted filling in.

The guy I spoke to when trying to change our circumstances didn't have a clue what he was doing and then when I rung the other day the guy I spoke to again didn't have a clue what he was doing - he only even answered as he pressed the wrong button!

Of course his part time work affects Income support, his £96 will be deducted from your IS aswell does this now tally your figures up.

I'm not surprised the DWP are confused if this thread is anything to go by.

tcr_3

When Carer's Allowance is awarded for a period that you've had Income Support for, the two offices have got to do a "recovery".

That means the Carer's Allowance arrears are offered to Income Support first. And Income Support have got to decide how much of those arrears they're going to claim back ... because they haven't taken it into account in their calculations. But they've also got to work out how much of the extra Income Support Carer Premium they've got to give you.

So there's quite a lot of calculations for Income Support to do. From what you say, the "recovery period" runs until the first week of January. So you should get your normal Income Support payments until then without an adjustment for Carer's Allowance. But from January onwards Income Support will adjust their payments accordingly.

For the period of November-January (the recovery period) Income Support will work out how much they want to claim back off Carer's Allowance. There will be still some back money due to you ... but you'll have to wait until Income Support work it all out. You can phone Income Support if you like to chase them up, but frankly they'll have been so overwhelmed with queries about Cold Weather Payments this week, with staff shortages too, that they probably haven't gotton around to working it all out yet.