parents full time working

Ultimately, it's your decision and it looks like your mind was made up yesterday. All I can say is that I hope you didn't just consider the pros and cons of the situation in the short term, but also the longer term. I think it is easy to just consider the next months because it feels more real and ignore the next years, yet those years come and then many people feel that they have no control of their situation then, when in fact they did before, but opted out. What I would have considered more than anything is how you and your son would feel about the prospect of being on the same salary/benefits for the next 10 years, ie. if that's enough for you to feel you can offer your son a good life and you don't need more, than fair enough, and if not, what would be your chances of such a job again in the next year or so. If good, then it is worth taking the chance and seeing this as just delaying the situation. If however this is a real opportunity that is unlikely to come again, then I think it would be mad to not give a chance just because there is a chance you might not get JSA if you give it up.

FBaby wrote: »

Ultimately, it's your decision and it looks like your mind was made up yesterday. All I can say is that I hope you didn't just consider the pros and cons of the situation in the short term, but also the longer term. I think it is easy to just consider the next months because it feels more real and ignore the next years, yet those years come and then many people feel that they have no control of their situation then, when in fact they did before, but opted out. What I would have considered more than anything is how you and your son would feel about the prospect of being on the same salary/benefits for the next 10 years, ie. if that's enough for you to feel you can offer your son a good life and you don't need more, than fair enough, and if not, what would be your chances of such a job again in the next year or so. If good, then it is worth taking the chance and seeing this as just delaying the situation. If however this is a real opportunity that is unlikely to come again, then I think it would be mad to not give a chance just because there is a chance you might not get JSA if you give it up.

This is very true, it happened to me. Someone wanted to see me about a job not long after I'd returned to the workforce. As the job wasn't advertised it was highly likely it would be mine for the taking, but in those days I only wanted to work part-time. My son was 10 then, so when I found out, I said I wasn't interested in an interview. What happened next was the 2 day a job I had found, then increased to almost f-time hours, followed by them closing down. After six months out of work, I took an ad-hoc job for the next 3.5 years, where I worked f-time days when I did work. When that job finished at the beginning of last year I had another horrible six months out of work before finding the f-time job where I've been for over a year. What I've never had in all this time is a job that hasn't been short term contract, agency or casual but there years ago was a f-time permanent job that was pretty much mine for the taking and I didn't do it based on my family circs at the time. Family circs that started evolving within a few months and that we would have managed.

If you are in a universal credit area you won't be able to claim tax credits to top up your wages and most areas are being moved over to uc over the next couple of years.

And you would be expected to look for a full time job if you were on uc due to the age of your child as far as I'm aware, even if you were in part time work.

You may be able to stay on tax credits for a couple of years but universal credit is replacing WTC and its vastly different to working and being on tax credits.

Its an in work benefit and you are expected to look for full time work even if you have part time.

There are different rules re job search if you are a carer I believe so its something you might want to check out.

You are right, its 35 hours x NMW. i didnt actually say above that there would be no top up. My point was about being expected to job search on UC and not on WTC even if you have young children.

Its not a top up, its a basic allowance. For a single person its 317. If you have kids you get an in work allowance of 192 which you keep and after that for every penny you earn 63p is deducted from your UC. If you have no kids you get no in work allowance and for every penny you earn 63p comes off your UC allowance.

You also get more of an in work allowance if you dont claim housing element. Theres also a child element as well which replaces CTC

Really not sure why my post would have worried people. Previous posters were talking about JSA and WTC and I was merely pointing out that in some areas if you make a claim for WTC, you are put on UC instead. And that the conditions for getting UC are different to that of WTC and JSA. Im actually slightly better off on UC but I have to do more to get the benefit than I did on WTC. Really not sure why anything I said above implied that people on UC dont get an income. Its an in work benefit and I made that clear.

Anyway if I had read up I would have seen you had made your decision and I'll post nothing else on this thread.

Try to be helpful and you get chinned in response, pointless.

No worries. Just going to say also that Gingerbread have given you poor advice. No way would you get refused UC or JSA, if you turned down a job prior to going on benefit. You would only face a sanction if you refused a job while on benefit or got sacked or resigned. Even then there are allowances made, for example I gave up a zero hours job to focus on getting a full time one as by the time I paid travel costs and deductions were made I was working for pennies and travelling hundreds of miles to do so.

Im surprised that theyve given you duff advice but it is duff. At no point during my claim for UC was I asked if I had recently been offered a job and turned it down.