A Guide To Carers Allowance

Hello, my name is Lee Healey and I'm the managing director of Income Max, the entitlement experts. We help people to make sense of and understand the benefits and tax credit system. Today, we're going to tell you lots about the benefits and tax credits that are available.

Carer's allowance is a benefit under a carer who is caring for a disabled person. Now, there are lots of rules and regulations around carer's allowance and we're trying to give you an idea of what to think about if you're thinking about making a claim to this benefit. First of all, before you even think about claiming as a carer, the disabled person needs to be in receipt of the correct benefit, so this is the person that you are actually looking after and caring for.

The disabled person needs to be in receipt of disability living allowance care component at the middle or high rate or any rate of the attendance allowance, that's low or high rate attendance allowance. So before you even think about carer's allowance, the disabled person you care for must be in receipt of the correct disability benefit. Now, on to you as a carer.

So first of all, here are some things to think about. First of all, carer's allowance overlaps with certain benefits. For example, things like incapacity benefit or employment support allowance, contribution-based.

State pension, for example. They all kind of overlap with carer's allowance meaning that probably, if you get those benefits, you might not be able to get carer's allowance as well. The next thing to think about is work.

Basically, as a carer, if you earn more than a hundred pounds a week you will not be able to claim carer's allowance for caring for someone. That's really, really important because obviously you may be thinking about claiming as a carer and you may be doing lots of care for that disabled person but if you're working and earning more than a hundred pounds per week, you won't be able to claim as a carer. There is also some qualifying criteria about the hours that you need to be doing as a carer.

Basically, you need to be caring for someone at least thirty-five hours per week. So once again, that's thirty-five hours per week that you actually need to be providing that care for. There are loads and loads of other issues around carers as well, so the best advice is always to try and seek some advice from an expert to see whether carer's allowance is relevant for you, as a carer, and also for the disabled person as well.

One of the things I wanted to mention is the fact that claiming of carer's allowance can actually affect the disabled person's benefit. And that's because lots of disabled people, if they live on their own, that get something called an extra premium and that could be things like pension credit or income support, housing benefit, and council tax benefit. So before claiming as a carer, you should really have a full benefit assessment done on the disabled person's benefits as well, just to make sure that by you claiming as a carer, you haven't affected or lost the disabled person some money as well.

Also, it's worth mentioning, that carer's allowance has a kind of link with income support. If you are a carer, income support will often be relevant for you as well so it's well worth checking that side of things out. But of course, income support is a means tested benefit and you're subject to the rules and regulations around income support as well.

So, just to summarize, carer's allowance is a benefit, it's a non-contributory benefit, for carer's who are caring for someone, a disabled person, at least thirty-five hours per week. For more information on carer's allowance, it's well worth visiting the disability alliance website. They have lots of fact sheets on all the different benefits that are available, including information on carer's allowance.

Visit www.disabilityalliance.org.

And that's a quick guide to carer's allowance. .