Hi, like so many people I have had to give up my professional occupation in order to care for my husband who has developed Parkinsons and also vascular dementia, I am his sole carer. What upsets me is that because I receive a small State pension I am unable to claim carer allowance. I feel that this is very unfair for people like myself who do a full time carer job but am unable to claim the allowance.
Can anything be done to persuade this Government to change the regulation regarding this allowance which after all is not very much but at least it is a recognition of the work older carers do?.
Can somebody somewhere help to get this change done.
Hi & welcome Susan
Many have tried over decades and it’s never going to happen. The government keep saying there are other benefits. People can access example pension credit.
Personally, I would like my pension as I am a WASPI women. I have another three years to wait. I would be much better off with the new state pension instead of carers allowance.
As your husband has sadly vascular dementia are you in receipt of reduced council tax.
and are you claiming Attendance Allowance on his behalf ?
Re. Carer’s Allowance, I am a Supply Teacher and have only recently looked into claiming because my dad needs more help throughout the day now. I can only really work half days now. I explained this and the person on the helpline said that I would be classed as an Irregular Earner.
I assumed that the earnings threshold could be averaged out over a year. I never know how much work I will have and during the school holidays I can’t work at all. So if for example I was paid £600 in July and nothing in August because of the holidays I thought this would average out at 2 months allowance but the man on the helpline said that I would not be entitled for July as I would be above the threshold.
Does anyone know if it is possible to have irregular earnings averaged out over a period longer than 1 month?
I’ve just found another thread about this so will add a comment there instead.
If you are in employment and are paid a regular amount monthly, your monthly earnings are normally multiplied by 12 months to get a yearly figure and then divided by 52 weeks to get a weekly figure. However there are exceptions to this, such as if your earnings are variable. If you are in doubt about your own situation, please email us: advice@carersuk.org.
If you are in employment and have fluctuating earnings, it is possible for your earnings to be averaged out over a recognisable cycle of work or over five weeks.
Thank you. I did email you already and had some advice, however I still don’t understand how 5 weeks would work with the scenario I wrote about. Some weeks I would go over the threshold and other weeks I would earn nothing. It seems I would only get CA for the 13 weeks a year that I earn nothing even though averaged out over the school year I would earn under the threshold.
Also I have been reading some threads about deductions and expenses. How do you inform DWP about these? As a supply teacher I have to pay for the petrol to travel to assignments, sometimes a 50 mile round trip. Is this an allowed expense/ deduction?