Petition - Carers' Allowance

[Kathryn]

More details below:

 

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/caringiswork/

 

In the Welfare Green Paper No One Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility the Government proposes to transfer working age carers on Carers Allowance and Income Support to Job seekers Allowance. Carers are amongst the most responsible members of society. Without their contribution our NHS and social care systems would collapse. Transferring carers to job seekers allowance , a benefit that suggests carers are not working, are not contributing to society and are available for work is an insult and a contradiction of the government?s claim to ?recognise? carers? ?immense contribution? to society (estimated to be worth �87 billion a year). Carers' valuable social input should be recognised by keeping carer benefits separate from the rest of the benefit system.

[Clare63]

Done.

[Cat]

Thanks for the heads up about this Kathryn

 

Cat

[zaman]

Done. That's shocking news.

[Emum]

More details below:

 

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/caringiswork/

 

In the Welfare Green Paper No One Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility the Government proposes to transfer working age carers on Carers Allowance and Income Support to Job seekers Allowance. Carers are amongst the most responsible members of society. Without their contribution our NHS and social care systems would collapse. Transferring carers to job seekers allowance , a benefit that suggests carers are not working, are not contributing to society and are available for work is an insult and a contradiction of the government?s claim to ?recognise? carers? ?immense contribution? to society (estimated to be worth �87 billion a year). Carers' valuable social input should be recognised by keeping carer benefits separate from the rest of the benefit system.

 

Do you know any more about this Kathryn? I was at a meeting with a Minister from DCSF last week, when it was raised. She said the change was on the basis that anyone with caring responsibilities would definitely NOT be required to show they were available for/looking for work, nor would the amount of benefit they are currently being paid be changed in any way. The only reason for the change was so that carers who would like to work, but need specific kinds of jobs with flexible hours/part time, etc, can have access to the opportunities which are currently available only to those on JSA (eg access to advisers, training courses, grants, etc)

 

This could of course all be government spin, but I haven't been able to find anything which suggests that what she said wasn't true, or that there is any reason for anyone currently receiving CA to panic just yet.

[Kathryn]

Hi Emum,

 

No I don't know anything else: someone emailed me the link and that was the first I'd heard about it. If what you've said is true that's a bit more encouraging, although those on CA can at the moment earn up to �95 a week: I wonder if this will still be the case under the new proposals?

 

K x

[Kazzen161]

Do you know any more about this Kathryn? I was at a meeting with a Minister from DCSF last week, when it was raised. She said the change was on the basis that anyone with caring responsibilities would definitely NOT be required to show they were available for/looking for work, nor would the amount of benefit they are currently being paid be changed in any way. The only reason for the change was so that carers who would like to work, but need specific kinds of jobs with flexible hours/part time, etc, can have access to the opportunities which are currently available only to those on JSA (eg access to advisers, training courses, grants, etc)

 

This could of course all be government spin, but I haven't been able to find anything which suggests that what she said wasn't true, or that there is any reason for anyone currently receiving CA to panic just yet.

 

I find that hard to believe (how are they going to know who really is a carer if there is no carer's Allowance?). By definition "Job Seeker's" are looking for a job - lol!

 

I have been caught out with this before - told there would be no change to my money when x changed, and apparently what that really meant was that there would be no change when it first changed (it did affect my money quite considerably a few months later, in a way I could not have predicted).

 

I have just been asking about ESA, and she said that there would probably be no cut in money for those currently on IB when they were eventually put onto ESA, but they would not then get any annual increase in thier benefit until the ESA rate caught up with the IB rate. So each year they would be proportionately worse off.

[Kathryn]

The only reason for the change was so that carers who would like to work, but need specific kinds of jobs with flexible hours/part time, etc, can have access to the opportunities which are currently available only to those on JSA (eg access to advisers, training courses, grants, etc)

 

My simple brain is asking why don't they just give carers access to these services anyway?

 

K x

[baddad]

Do you know any more about this Kathryn? I was at a meeting with a Minister from DCSF last week, when it was raised. She said the change was on the basis that anyone with caring responsibilities would definitely NOT be required to show they were available for/looking for work, nor would the amount of benefit they are currently being paid be changed in any way. The only reason for the change was so that carers who would like to work, but need specific kinds of jobs with flexible hours/part time, etc, can have access to the opportunities which are currently available only to those on JSA (eg access to advisers, training courses, grants, etc)

 

This could of course all be government spin, but I haven't been able to find anything which suggests that what she said wasn't true, or that there is any reason for anyone currently receiving CA to panic just yet.

 

You have to think of it like a game of chess... not what the implications are now, but how people are made 'invisible' by hiding them within bigger statistics, and then clobbered by a piece of legislation that effects that bigger demographic... The changes down the road might not have any significant effect on the majority, but have huige implications for the small percentage who have just been relabelled. Their voice, as a 'lobby' is completely lost, because as a percentage of the overall statistic they appear insignificant, whereas before they were significant by the very fact that they 'stood' in isolation. For the most part, the GBP (great british public) are - in principle - very sympathetic toward carers. They have far less sympathy for Job-seekers, especially at times when Governments are manipulating opinion to brand them as feckless, idol 'benefit scroungers'...

 

[Emum]

I find that hard to believe (how are they going to know who really is a carer if there is no carer's Allowance?). By definition "Job Seeker's" are looking for a job - lol!

 

I have been caught out with this before - told there would be no change to my money when x changed, and apparently what that really meant was that there would be no change when it first changed (it did affect my money quite considerably a few months later, in a way I could not have predicted).

 

I have just been asking about ESA, and she said that there would probably be no cut in money for those currently on IB when they were eventually put onto ESA, but they would not then get any annual increase in thier benefit until the ESA rate caught up with the IB rate. So each year they would be proportionately worse off.

 

As far as I'm aware there will still be Carers Allowance. It's just that for those who currently get Carers Allowance with a top up of income support, it will change so they get Carers Allowance with a top up of Job Seekers Allowance. So it will be obvious if someone is a carer from the outset.

 

As for whether they'll change the criteria a few months down the line, anythings possible! That's the way of these things. I think that the Carers Centre may be advising on the ramifications of the change for anyone who has access to one. Sadly in our area its only funded to support carers of adults not carers of children, but it varies locally I think.

[Kazzen161]

As far as I'm aware there will still be Carers Allowance. It's just that for those who currently get Carers Allowance with a top up of income support, it will change so they get Carers Allowance with a top up of Job Seekers Allowance. So it will be obvious if someone is a carer from the outset.

 

As for whether they'll change the criteria a few months down the line, anythings possible! That's the way of these things. I think that the Carers Centre may be advising on the ramifications of the change for anyone who has access to one. Sadly in our area its only funded to support carers of adults not carers of children, but it varies locally I think.

 

Will they still get a carers premium on JS as they do on IS I wonder? On IS you are allowed to earn �15/wk or do some voluntary work (which a lot of carers do) without it affecting your benefit? Is that the same on JS? The benefits system is so complex it is hard to tell what you will get til you actually get it (or don't ).

 

They didn't change the criteria in my example. They told me in writing "there will be no change in the amount of money you get after this change". This was true at the time of the changeover, because the mortgage rates were going down. However, once they started going up, it meant I was up to �60 a month worse off. Silly me presumed "there will be no change in your money", meant it would not affect how much they would pay me (for a long time) not just that it would not change the amount "on the day that it changed over" as the dss later assured me it really meant! By the time everyone realised that this change (paying a set rate of interest only towards mortgages, rather than the rate that your mortgage was actually charging) was actually affecting the amount they were getting, several months had passed and there was nothing anyone could do. They did not tell us that they were basing the set rate on the 20 cheapest mortgage rates at the time (so building societies like "outer hebrides mutual" or ones that gave preferential rates to wealthy clients), so we could not have predicted what effect it would have on us. When I asked at the dss it took a while to find someone who could explain how it worked, and why I was getting less.

 

As someone said: why not just say it's OK for carer's to go on training courses.

 

There's got to be a catch.

[Kazzen161]

Just read this on the benefits and work web-site:

 

As positive steps, the government have announced that from April 2009 the length of time claimants will have to wait before their mortgage interest will be paid via their income support, employment and support allowance or jobseekers allowance is to be reduced from 39 weeks to 13 weeks. In addition, the maximum level of mortgage on which interest will be paid will be increased from �100,000 to �175,000.

 

However, the government has also announced that, for new jobseeker?s allowance claimants from April 2009, mortgage interest payments will stop after two years, leading to almost certain repossession of claimants? homes.

 

No explanation has been given for this change in policy, which does not apply to income support or employment and support allowance claimants.

 

----------------------

 

I wonder if people on Carers Allowance and IS will have their mortgage payments protected when transferred to JS?

[wishingwell]

Done.

[Kathryn]

You can now see the government response to this petition

 

here

 

K x