The government’s impact statement into the change to Universal Credit found some people were already “struggling to get by” on the standard allowance of \u00a3400 for a single person, meaning the health top-up, worth an additional \u00a3400, was a temptation not to work and the system needed to be re-balanced.<\/p>\n
It reported that 1.9 million people received the health top-up in 2019\/2020, but that was predicted to increase to three million by 2029\/30.<\/p>\n
“This is bad for people, bad for businesses and bad for the economy,” the impact statement said. <\/p>\n
“We know that good work is good for people’s mental and physical health.”<\/p>\n
But families who rely on the top-up, and charities who support them, say they are concerned about the impact it will have.<\/p>\n
Derek Sinclair, a senior welfare rights expert from the charity Contact, said the changes would be a “massive financial blow”.<\/p>\n
“I think in a lot of cases, the money’s all being pooled together as one household kitty to help meet whatever expenses the disabled child has,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We already know that lots of families with disabled children are struggling financially. They’re missing out on things like therapies, equipment and activities. We’ve got very real concerns about this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government’s impact statement into the change to Universal Credit found some people were already “struggling to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-875263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116356378000265020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}