The Guardian reports that those teachers, NHS staff and other key workers who do balance part-time work with caring for loved ones are quitting their jobs to avoid being hit with huge cash penalties for breaching carer’s allowance rules.
They say that research into the human impact of the penalties found sanctions running into thousands of pounds, triggered by opaque rules, and poor administration by benefits officials playing havoc with carers’ working lives, health and finances:
The report, by Carers UK, a charity, details carers being forced to take desperate measures to avoid breaching tight earnings limits, including: quitting their jobs; cutting their hours; turning down pay rises, one-off cost of living payments and performance bonuses; and even working free hours each month.
Those who unwittingly breached the £151 a week earnings limits – in some cases by less than £1 – said the disproportionate penalties levied on them for doing so landed them with huge debts, plunging them and the people they care for into hardship, and inflicting a savage toll on their mental health.
The so-called “cliff-edge” earnings rules mean a carer who oversteps the limit must repay the whole £81.90 weekly allowance. A carer who earned £1 more than the £151 threshold for 52 weeks, therefore, would pay back not £52 but £4,258.80. Some are prosecuted for fraud.
A Guardian investigation earlier this year revealed the scale of the carer’s allowance injustices, including the last government’s failure to address failings it had known about for years. Latest figures show 134,500 unpaid carers were repaying £251m in earnings-related overpayments, with 11,500 carers repaying sums above £5,000.
This was an issue raised by Ed Davey in his first Prime Minister's questions as leader of the third largest party in the House of Commons. It is one that the new government urgently needs to address before the already creaking care system starts to fall apart.
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