I am about to go on maternity leave and will be entitled to SMP during my time off. My husband is a stay at home dad so my income is our only income. It will be impossible to manage on the SMP for the four months that I will be off work and, due to the income in the year so far being at a certain rate, we have been told by tax credits that it is unlikely we will get any increase from them (we only get the family element atm). Does anybody know whether there are any other benefits that we could claim for the time that I will be off work? We have no savings as have just had to fork out for extensive repairs on our car, which I have to have as a requirement of my job. Any help would be gratefully received.

You may get some housing and council tax benefits.

Thanks for that. I'll certainly look into council tax benefit but housing benefit doesn't apply as we pay a mortgage rather than rent. I am more concerned about how I will pay all the other bills as our weekly shop alone is more than the £120 odd we'll be getting (there'll be two adults and three children then). Beginning to realise that we should have tried to plan for baby being born at the beginning of the financial year and then we could have claimed the appropriate level of tax credits from the start!

The first £100 of your SMP is disregarded for tax credits so you can inform them of your new estimated income when you go on maternity pay. That might readjust your payments.

SMP is currently £128.73 per week.

Income Support for a couple is currently £105.95 per week so you could consider claimin from when you go on maternity leave but you won't qualify for any payment until you qualiify for the help for your mortgage interest and you can continue with the claim for IS until your baby is 15 weeks old after that there won't be any assistance unless your partner makes a claim for JSA and actively searches for full time employment to support the family. You wouldn't be eligible to claim JSA yourself as you are still employed whilst on maternity leave.

Apart from that there is no financial assistance available through DWP, technically although your partner is at home caring for your other child/ren is there any pther reason (e.g illness/disability) why they can't take employment during your maternityleave to help out with the finances?