disabled parent with disabled child

sarahlouise210

Consider the following scenario.... Disabled parent receives Disability Living Allowance and consequently a carers allowance has been claimed for their care - this parent then has a severely disabled child who receives Highest rate care element - the nature of the disabled parents disability does not stop them being able to care for their child. The disabled parent cannot claim Carers allowance for their child as their part time earnings are above £79.00 per week..... can the parent claim an underlying entitlement to carers allowance thereby getting a credit towards the second state pension available to carers??? ???

Ted_Hutchinson

It sounds like what you are asking for should be possible however I have checked with the Carer Allowance Customer Services and it isnt possible.

Although you can have an "Underlying Entitlement" to Carer's Allowance which carries with it the credits for a Second state pension, when the payment of CA is overlapped but a higher benefit such as Incapacity Benefit or State Pension this doesn't occur when the person is earning more than the £79 after certain deductions allowed.

The earnings not only, block the payment of CA, but also it's underlying entitlements as well.

It's not fair but thats not unusual for DWP legislation.

sarahlouise210

Thank you for your advice ... that was very helpful :-*

Tran

This isn't the same situation but kind of similar. This is not me, but a family friend's family. Imagine the senario, a family with 2 parents and 2 children. All 4 of them are on highest rate care component of DLA(for differnet illnesses) and receive the mobility component (at diferent rates). they thought about trying to claim the carers allowance - not because they would be better off with the carers allowance (as this money would just get knocked off their income support) but they would get the £25 p.w. carers premium per child added to the income support. Parents were told specifically not to try to claim the carers allowance because by doing this their DLA would be most likely be reviewed (i.e. reduced) because of their ability to care for the children (through their claim of carers allowance). The only way to get round this was for 2 relatives to claim the carers allowances for the children and to offer some support to make them eligible for the carers allowance.

I know this is a different situation to the one sarahlouise210 is talking about but it indicates how when you get a family with disabled parent/s and a disabled child/ren (as in when their are genetic illnesses), you find you cannot claim all the benefits.