Charities are demanding a better deal for the UK’s army of unpaid carers and have drawn up a carer’s poverty charter, calling for improved benefits, including an increase on the weekly carer’s allowance of £53.10. Carers UK, Mencap and the Alzheimers Society are among nine leading charities behind the charter, who aim to end carer poverty. Six million carers look after family members or friends at home and often struggle to pay for their basic needs. The charities complain that the carer’s charter is insufficient and too tricky to claim.

Benefit reforms…

Most carers struggle to pay bills and are cutting back on food. Its list of demands includes higher benefits which are more straightforward to claim. For more information on the challenges

Not saving…
There is a long list of other restrictions including:

• You have to be caring for more than 35 hours a week
• You cannot study for 21 hours or more
• If you are receiving a state pension, the two benefits cancel each other out

One carer who’s wife has suffered a series of strokes, commented about the financial strain he was under as a carer. She suffers from short-term memory loss and has no feeling down the left side of her body, so she needs constant supervision. Even so, he cannot get carer’s allowance, the benefit which is supposed to help people like him. “We’re struggling. To care for her, I feel I should stop work but I can’t” he explains. They need the money to keep up their mortgage payments. After cutting his hours at a local supermarket and relies on friends to keep an eye on his wife when he is out but he still brings home around £150 a week from his part-time job, and that takes him above the maximum allowed for Carer’s Allowance. Applicants cannot earn more than £95 a week. The result is that fewer than 500,000 out of the UK’s millions of carers actually get the allowance. Many families are running down their assets, not saving for their own futures, not saving for their pensions and going into their old age in poverty.

Comment..
People who need to be looked after can claim benefits themselves, such as and attendance allowance. To investigate these possibilities; speak to your doctor; your local health authority; your local council and councilors …

See our pages on Domiciliary Care here:
http://247professionalhealth.com/wanted_domiciliary_staff/