good evening. I look after my mum and she had a medical this past week and my question is for if she fails her medical and am caring for even though she has PIP and she is on ESA I think it is also am I still Entitled to be her carer and still be my job and still get my Carer Allowance if they had sense when looking at her issues and problems that she will never be fit for work and she won't get any better simple as that. if anyone can respond to my question would be great thanks.

Hi With Carers Allowance I am given to understand that the DWP will average out the income over the period of time that you worked. In this case, working for 18 weeks, the first 5 weeks took the income well over the limit (and were properly notified) with the rest (13 weeks) at well under the limit. My way of looking at it (rather simplistic mind you) is that Carers Allowance is due for those 13 weeks and not for the other 5. However the DWP have now averaged the income earned over the 18 weeks and in doing so it takes all 18 weeks out of the equation with no Carers Allowance due. Is that correct? If so, why doesn't it work the other way with hours of caring? If someone cares for 9 days - 2 travelling and 7 actually caring in every 4 weeks (due to distance involved) and in that period the hours spent caring amounted to over 145 hours including travelling time to get there and back, they should have those hours averaged over the 4 weeks meaning that they would get Carers Allowance for each week. But they don't - they only pay it (after they have been pushed into doing so) for that one week only. Surely if the DWP are allowed to average out the income, then they should have to average out the hours?

Having spent 3 days trying to access customer services via their BTChat I gave up. Spoke to customer services - got a Sales idiot who assured me they could provide me with BT Infinity at my new address because I was such a valued customer - even though she did not know the postcode that I was moving to - lies and more lies. Spoke to another customer services lady and eventually managed to give notice to terminate my services. Received confirmatory email with details (Order Number: HMNIAZZ05500357406) of what would be charged by way of early termination charges. My BT services cease on 18th October and lo and behold I now receive another bill with yet another cycle of advance line rental and no mention of it being a "Final Bill". Contacted BT Customer services and spoke to highly unhelpful and ignorant woman who tried to impress upon me the fact that the billing cycle is automatic and "no human involvement" is required. Maybe that was why she was so bored...... Outcome - BT may or may not refund the advance line rental charges that they should not be charging (assuming that is that there is actually some form of communication between customer services and billing) OR they just might go on billing me until I die. For 18 months I have had to put up with a package that I can only "upsize" and not "downsize" so effectively they have had 18months worth of payment from me for something I am not able to use. I have had extremely slow internet speeds - pages taking up to 2-3 minutes to load. I have had service outages for which I have still had to pay for the service I was not receiving when they could not be bothered to send a technician to keep an appointment to fix my service. And they wonder why I don't want their crappy service any more!!!! My advice - "Don't touch BT with a barge pole" - they could not give a toss about their customers and their customer service staff - well let's put it this way "It is nice to be paid for a job that you DON'T do"

Hey all i'm after some help. i'm a single father caring for 2 children, one severely disabled. Due to my daughter's care needs, i rarely sleep at night, generally grabbing a few hours during the day while the kids are at school. I've just been awarded DLA for myself (high rate mobility and middle rate care) after finally giving in and admitting to myself that i did in fact have a disability. So that was awarded last week and back dated to the beginning of Feb 13. Today i get a letter from ATOS telling me my Income support is changing and i have to go to some damned interview. I currently get: Carers allowance for me Income support for me (on the grounds of illness/disability) Child Tax Credits and as just mentioned DLA My question is this: Should i continue to claim income support on the grounds of illness (obviously, DLA think i'm disabled otherwise they wouldn't have awarded it) or can i, as somebody mentioned somewhere, terminate my claim on disability grounds and make a fresh one on the grounds of caring? Given that i care 24/7 for my daughter, it is hard to see how JC+ expect me to to work as well. Also, as a side question, I've seen mention of a "carer premium" but i don't know if that is paid as tax credits or IS? I've checked my award notice from HMRC and get disability element and a severe disability element for my daughter but can see no mention of any "carer premium" I have recently had lots of changes to my benefit (these were BEFORE the changes that have come in since April 2013) which has resulted in me being almost £80 a month worse off since i changed from IS to CTC, i was under the impression that payment levels would remain the same.....? Any help would be appreciated.