Complete Benefit Newbie Needs Advice

scrapbooksarah

Hi All,

Having never needed to claim benefit in the past I have no knowledge of entitlements I'd be grateful if anyone could give me an idea of what I should be claiming following a change in my circumstances.

I have just split with my husband and me and my 2 children are now moving into rented accommodation costing £575 pcm (as is my husband).

My children are 4 and 7 and I work 26 hours a week as a teaching assistant (term time only). My income for last year was £8400. My childcare costs for after school club are £70 a week.

So far I have been told I will be entitled to around £220 in tax credits, free school meals and around £250 a month housing benefit.

Should I be thinking about any other benefits or is this it?

I REALLY appreciate any help you can offer!!!!

lynnysinger

hi there ande welcome to the forum.
if you do a search for benefit calculator, you can input your details and it will give you all of the benefits that you are entitled to.
or go to/phone CAB for their advice.
Hope that you get things sorted, and good luck as a new single mum! x

BigAunty

Council tax discount - at least the 25% reduction for single adult. Child benefit. This will probably boost your existing benefits from around £470 per month to approx £640.

You can double check all entitlements on the Turn2us online benefit checker.

The child maintenance paid by your ex doesn't impact your benefits. I think he's expected to pay around 15% of his wages for 2 kids if you were to go the CSA route if you don't reach a settlement. How much does he earn and is he contributing?

Why do you pay for an after school club if you work school times or is there another factor for this?

[Deleted User]

If you qualify got Working Tax Credit it's unlikely you will get free School Meals? Is the £220 figure weekly?

drwho2011

So your saying your getting:

Annually
£8,400 Salary
£11,400 CTC
£3,250 HB
£1,747 CB

Total: £24,797

I suspect you may get some Council Tax Benefit as well.

Parva

Deleted_User wrote: »

If you qualify got Working Tax Credit it's unlikely you will get free School Meals? Is the £220 figure weekly?

I fail to understand where free school meals came into this question and your response was a little shy of being coherrent. Still, it could have been worse, the poster after you also managed to confuse the use of "your" in place of "you're".

There's a huge difference and apologies for being a grammar freak but it makes all the difference!

BigAunty

drwho2011 wrote: »

So your saying your getting:

Annually
£8,400 Salary
£11,400 CTC
£3,250 HB
£1,747 CB

Total: £24,797

I suspect you may get some Council Tax Benefit as well.

I assumed that the £220 tax credits mentioned were monthly, not weekly.

A lone parent with 2 children tends to get around £100 a week in child tax credits if they aren't working so assumed that her income affects this. this is just a guess, though.

BigAunty

I went through the Turn2us online benefit calculator with the OPs details (lone parent, two school age kids, £8.4k salary) and it indicated the following entitlements, excluding LHA and CT as obviously I can't identify her local rate.

This indicates that in addition to the £672 per month net income from employment, and any child maintenance and child benefit, she may be entitled to more tax credits. However, it's quite easy to put in wrong data and get false info out of these benefit calculators.

Period:06/04/2011-05/04/2012 weekly
£ Initial Tax Credit award for period:£166.82
Working Tax Credit: £58.53
Child Tax Credit: £108.29


Weekly, this would would out per week in her hand as

£155 net employment income (less if there are pension contributions)
£166 working and child tax credits
£33 child benefit

plus
£55 housing benefit (based on OPs figures)
£15 council tax benefit (just an estimate based on the Turn2us figures, not reliable)


I wonder if my calculations via the benefit calculator are wrong or if the OP isn't claiming her full benefits or if her husband isn't/cannot provide child maintenance or she has debts to service as she should be struggling on approx £350 in her hand each week, excluding child maintenance, even with the after school club fees of £70 and rent of £75.

EDIT - note that if the weekly hours worked do not meet the 16 hour a week threshold for WTC across the year which are worked during a term, the above calculations are going to be very wrong as the OP wouldn't qualify for WTC. As she gets free school dinners (which isn't usually the case with WTC, this might be the case) in which case the OP could benefit from another small part time job on top if this substantially improves her income through WTC.

Without the WTC award, the OP would receive a bit more council tax discount and a higher sum of HB but would only get around £108 in child tax credits instead of £166.

drwho2011

BigAunty wrote: »

I assumed that the £220 tax credits mentioned were monthly, not weekly.

A lone parent with 2 children tends to get around £100 a week in child tax credits if they aren't working so assumed that her income affects this. this is just a guess, though.

Then I'm pretty sure the difference between our figures (£166 and £220) was the childcare cost element.

I went on the assumption that she was getting 220pw in WTC/CTC because I couldn't get the figures to add up any other way.

[Deleted User]

Parva wrote: »

I fail to understand where free school meals came into this question and your response was a little shy of being coherrent. Still, it could have been worse, the poster after you also managed to confuse the use of "your" in place of "you're".

There's a huge difference and apologies for being a grammar freak but it makes all the difference!

Well read the original post then! The OP mentions entitlement to free school meals, which I pointed out she won't qualify for.

Get a life Parva!

tartanterra

Parva wrote: »

I fail to understand where free school meals came into this question

Then read the original post, where it quite clearly states:

scrapbooksarah wrote: »

So far I have been told I will be entitled to around £220 in tax credits, free school meals and around £250 a month housing benefit.