Alongside 91 other organisations, we have written today to both the Work and Pensions Secretary and the Chancellor, calling on the Government to raise Carer’s Allowance as part of Carers UK’s #FairerForCarers campaign.
Despite the huge contribution unpaid carers are making, too many carers and their families face financial hardship. At least 1.2 million carers are living in poverty and – on average – each day, 600 people have to give up paid work to care.
Read the open letter and find out more about the #FairerForCarers campaign:
02 July 2020
Carers UK and ninety two other charities, including DR UK, have today written a joint letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey calling for the urgent extra financial support to unpaid carers to ensure “they are supported during the coronavirus crisis and beyond”.
A copy of the letter has been sent to the Chancellor.
Hi Lizzie, In addition to this no carer should be made to care on carers allowance for decades. This situation reduces and stomps on every opportunity in life, due to any carer caring and having to complete 10’s of thousands of unpaid care hours( often without support). Although social care and health aren’t allowed to force unpaid care, they actually do, by ignoring and using unpaid care and the low income of it, as a tool to cause a rut.
Whilst I am happy that the earnings limit has been increased a bit, so that earnings plus CA equal the minimum wage, this still doesn’t recognise that many carers who want to work cannot because of the high care needs of their caree, and the lack of available services.
I was very well qualified but unable to work because of my own son’s disability, even appealing all the way to the Ombudsman, who recognised that respite should have been provided, didn’t mean the LA must provide it!
I am also concerned about pensioner carers who get NOTHING extra, simply because they get their pension. However, most pensioners can do as they please, most carer pensioners are tied to their carees.
Surely pensioner carers should get MORE ALLOWANCES, not less? I know someone in her 80’s still caring, and there have been many examples on the forum.
I am trying and trying just to get Social Services to draw up a proper needs assessment for my son, and details of his hobbies, his extended family etc.
At the moment, he has no time to see friends as “he sees them at day services”, i.e. assuming he has no friends in the “outside world at all”.
He has a girlfriend, they are closer to each other than anyone else, they went to school together for 10 years. Unfortunately, they live 200 miles away, so rarely see each other, but they exchange notes etc. and when they meet, they walk along arm in arm, which they never EVER do with anyone else.
As far as Social Services are concerned, she doesn’t even get a mention, although I’ve said repeatedly about her!
There is no mention of his own steam engine, his own garden tractor, that are his pride and joy. How can they work out how much time he needs to follow his hobbies if they don’t know what they are?
He knows every long term steam engine owner in the area, he went to his first weekend rally when he was 6 weeks old. When I drove the roller, he was in a baby sling on my chest! He can even drive our 10 ton steam roller quite happily, but my other son has to be on the footplate for insurance purposes, as M doesn’t have a licence.
Despite all this, SSD have commissioned 52 week care with an agency, he’s never EVER been away from me for 52 weeks, he knows he has 2 holidays a year with me, plus time before Christmas doing the Christmas cake himself, then making hot cross buns at Easter. There is a show he always goes to in May, another in June, one at the end of July that we take our engine to, he’s always home for a week for that, etc. etc.
I am just a nuisance to them, saying these things!!!
Mention “carer” and most people think you are talking about an elderly parent.
At Carers meetings I used to go to, I was usually the only one caring for my child, a complete fish out of water.
I recognised early on that my family had been given a life sentence, and was determined that I would do my utmost to ensure we all had the best life possible.
This week, almost 3 years late, I’ve received the Subject Access Request results. 1800 sides of paper, yet STILL I am banging on about the same things I was three years ago, just the same old same old to yet another social worker and yet another care provider.
Does no one care that the bicycles are never serviced now, that one bike that was condemned was “mended” by my son from a similar bike put out for the dustmen to collect??
Does no one care that my son has put on almost a stone during lockdown? He’s now 19 stone, he should be nearer 14.
His old care plan said he should do an hour of exercise every night, does no one care that he never does any meaningful exercise?
Does no one care if the most exciting thing he does is go to the tip?
I’m so, so weary of fighting to get what he should be getting anyhow.
Soy to hear that Cloudygal, sadly, feelings I know only too well. Officialdom has no idea what ever how much I do for M, although he doesn’t live with me any more.
