Carer's allowance (CA) is a benefit for people who regularly spend at least 35 hours a week caring for a disabled person. The amount of savings you have does not affect your CA.
To get carer's allowance you must:
To satisfy these tests you must:
Ordinarily resident is not defined. It is taken to mean the place where you normally live for the time being if there is a degree of continuity about your stay and it can be described as being settled.
Present means physically present in UK.
The rates are:
If you have dependent children you may be able to get extra help by claiming child tax credit.
If your partner has certain benefits or earnings or an occupational and personal pension of more than £30.20 this affects the adult dependent addition.
The amount of savings you have does not affect your CA.
CA continues to be paid for up to 8 weeks after the person you care for has died. You will still need to qualify under the other rules.
You claim on form DS700 (DS700(SP) if you get a state pension). These forms are available from a Jobcentre Plus office, Pension Centre or by ringing the free Benefit Enquiry Line (0800 882200 or 0800 220674 in Northern Ireland).
You can also claim carers allowance online in Great Britain at www.direct.gov.uk/carers-ca.
CA is itself an 'overlapping benefit'. This means that, for example, if your state retirement pension is less than CA (£50.55 a week) you will be entitled to a top up of CA to that amount.
If your pension is more than £50.55 you won't actually get CA but you will still have underlying entitlement to it.
Whichever applies you may still be able to get extra pension credit because you are entitled to CA.
If you get CA you are allowed to work but must earn no more than £95 a week after tax, NI contributions and half of any pension contributions have been taken into account.
If you pay someone to look after the person you care for or any of your children who are under age 16 you can have up to half of these payments offset against any earnings you receive. You cannot do this if the payments are made to a close relative.
A close relative is the parent, partner, son, daughter, brother or sister of a carer or the person being cared for.
If you are "entitled" to receive CA you can also get the carer premium (or extra pension credit) when claiming means tested benefits such as income support, housing benefit or council tax benefit.
You are still classed as entitled to receive CA even if you receive another "overlapping" benefit, such as incapacity benefit, which prevents you actually being paid CA. This is known as having an "underlying entitlement" to CA.
If you are paid CA it may stop the person you care for from getting severe disability premium as part of their income support, housing benefit or council tax benefit. However if you have underlying entitlement to CA (not actually paid CA) you can get the carer premium and the person you care for can keep their severe disability premium.
You can get help at a local advice centre, such as a citizen's advice bureau. You can get more information about this from our factsheet F15, Finding a local advice centre, which is available at www.disabilityalliance.org/f15.htm.
You can also find out more information about carer's allowance in Disability Alliance's Disability Rights Handbook, available to buy at www.disabilityalliance.org/drh33.htm.
You can obtain copies of our factsheets by contacting Disability Alliance on 020 7247 8776 (voice and minicom) or by fax on 020 7247 8765.
April 2008
