help regarding esa/carers allowance

brian36

hi to all, can i ask for some advice please, so short as i can. i am self employed but been off sick for almost a year and still getting lines etc at present my wife works full time and earns about 17k a year we have 2 teenagers 1 is registered disabled for who i am carer. we are in receipt of tax credits but no h/ben or c/tax help. my question is since i am going to be signed off for atleast another 6 months am i better off going on esa as a few months ago i did get esa but only nat ins stamp credits as child tax credits put as above, but at time we had 3 teenagers. so i am confused about esa/carers allowance i believe you can get one or the other. the other thing as since over tax credit/wage bracket i get no help with prescriptions and i do have a few which costs a fair bit and was told if i was on cont based esa i would get help. i hope this makes sense to someone and appreciate any advice you can give thanks

epitome

You would have to claim ESA Conts as your partner works full time

Child tax credits won't affect your claim. AFAIK Working tax Credits in your name also won't affect your claim... so the only conclusion I can come to as to why you did not qualify before.... is that you have not earned enough as self employed to actually qualify for ESA Conts.

You won't be able to get free prescriptions with ESA Conts.....You will have to apply on a HC1 for a HC2 certificate to help with health costs but you probably won't qualify.


You can apply for Carers Allowance to care for someone if you are on ESA Conts but you won't be paid the Carers Allowance it will be called an Underlying Entitlement to Carers Allowance, for as long as you are only eligible to ESA Conts and not ESA IR, then there will be no point in claiming Carers Allowance. If you find you are not entitled to ESA Conts you might aswell close ESA and claim Carers Allowance as that will pay £61 a week.