I hope this gets somewhere. The flaky relationship between carers and the benefits system is heartless.
The DWP gives me £69 a week to provide a *minimum* of 35 hours care a week for my wife. On top of that I’m theoretically entitled to earn around £130ish from employment, but as I’m a carer for my wife, who claims ESA, her ESA is classed a joint claim, so any income I might earn would be taken from her ESA on a £ for £ basis, and if I earn more than that £130ish, my Carers Allowance would be stopped. But I’d need to earn £160ish a week just to break even with the loss of my wife’s ESA. So it’s essentially impossible for me to earn anything without either making ourselves worse off, or somehow working at least another 30 hours a week on top of my role as a carer. As a carer I also have no underlying entitlement to things like free dental care or eye tests.
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I hope this gets somewhere. The flaky relationship between carers and the benefits system is heartless.
The DWP gives me £69 a week to provide a *minimum* of 35 hours care a week for my wife. On top of that I’m theoretically entitled to earn around £130ish from employment, but as I’m a carer for my wife, who claims ESA, her ESA is classed a joint claim, so any income I might earn would be taken from her ESA on a £ for £ basis, and if I earn more than that £130ish, my Carers Allowance would be stopped. But I’d need to earn £160ish a week just to break even with the loss of my wife’s ESA. So it’s essentially impossible for me to earn anything without either making ourselves worse off, or somehow working at least another 30 hours a week on top of my role as a carer. As a carer I also have no underlying entitlement to things like free dental care or eye tests.