Sister - new born baby: advice welcomed!

HUFCsteve

I'm after some advice on behalf of my sister. She has recently had a baby (very prematurely) but now are both doing ok. However, the baby is still in the baby unit and is unlikely to be coming out until the end of December.

My sister is no longer with her partner and so of late has been living with my parents, neither of whom have been in the best of health. My sister also has underlying health problems (diabetes, kidney, recently registered as being partially sighted).

It looks like my sister and her baby may have to move in with my parents but this scenario is far from ideal as the house is too small and in any case - my parents are not well enough to have a baby in the house 24/7.

What would be the starting point for my sister in accessing help/assistance from our local authority/others?

I'd be grateful for any help/advice that I can pass on.

Mara69

First port of call will be her local council. Alternatively, she could look to privately rent. Is your sister in receipt of benefits?

HUFCsteve

She's not in receipt of any benefits at the moment, but then doesn't appear to have any savings, or real means of supporting herself either. Hence why she has been staying with my parents.

She has got a job (not quite fulltime) and obviously on maternity leave now. But because of her health problems, she has had a lot of time off during the past couple of years and particularly within recent months. I would question as to whether she is truly well enough to hold down a job in the future.

cosmic-dust

She can give up her job tomorrow now that she is a single parent and start claiming Income Support without any sanctions. But if she has health problems maybe she would be better claiming ESA.

She should have put in a claim for working and child tax credits single working parent only needs 16 hours to qualify for working tax.
She needs to claim child benefit.
And finally she needs to claim child support from the father.

LL30

She has my sympathy, my lo was born early last year and it is a nightmare scenario. Emotionally it is beyond traumatic and financially it is scarily expensive to have a child in NICU. A few pointers:

- Working Tax credit and Child Tax credit: she needs to apply (if she has not before, I remember doing the forms from my hospital bed and it was a struggle but one of the nurses actually helped me!) How many hours was she working and is she on SMP or does she get a company top up too? There is a £100 a week disregard for SMP for tax credits purposes. This should top up her income (to give you an idea, I was receiving £130 a week in WTC and CTC whilst on SMP, you can also request that the WTC (if applicable) is backdated for 3 months. If she is disabled, she may get another element too, but I don't know a lot about this.

- Child benefit: she needs to get baby registered to claim this.

- In terms of whether she is well enough to work, I'd give it some time before looking at this, she has 39 paid weeks to consider her position, and at the moment she's probably not in a position to reflect on the future.

- It's worth knowing that most hospitals have a cut rate for parking for people with babies in NICU, enquire about this. I also received free meals because I signed a 24 hr care contract, which basically mean that once my lo was able to feed, I would do all her cares and feeds (basically be her Mum, I didn't need free meals to do that, but it helped and the portions were so big, I used to share them with her Dad!)

- She needs to approach the council, but I won't lie, declaring you are homeless is not easy, even with a prem baby. She will be high priority, but that doesn't mean that they can magic a house out of thin air for her - they contemplated putting me in a hostel with a high risk pregnancy...but retracted on health and safety grounds and told me to squat...! I'm wondering whether it's worth giving social services a ring, I did, and declared that an unborn baby was at risk (my own!) They may be able to help, especially with the complexities of the case, or at least help find appropriate support.

- She may still qualify for housing benefit even with tax credits etc (I did, and I thought it was nuts but there you go)

A lot of form filling and fighting, she's going to need your support - my head was in a shed for 6 months and it took a long time to retrieve it again. Small steps, one at a time and set the wheels in motion. I hope the little one is doing OK and I'd urge your sister to try BLISS if she needs some emotional support, they are angels. Can't think of anything else right now, but will come back if I do xxx

midnight_express

Where is the father ?

HUFCsteve

Father still seeing the baby, although not named on the certificate - don't know why.

skintandscared_2

Will the father be assisting financially?

rogerblack

HUFCsteve wrote: »

My sister is no longer with her partner and so of late has been living with my parents, neither of whom have been in the best of health. My sister also has underlying health problems (diabetes, kidney, recently registered as being partially sighted).

Depending on the degree of disability, and the care needs, DLA may also be possible.