I had a sobering morning recently interviewing two separate couples seeking advice about Attendance Allowance. In both cases one of the couple had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and their partner was their main or sole carer.
Both couples were over pensionable age; in one case, in their eighties. A pensioner carer won't even receive the meagre Carers Allowance of about £60 per week - at best, they might see about £33 added to their Pension Credit as a carer premium - less than £1 for each hour of care they must provide as a minimum to be eligible. Many thousands of older carers receive no financial recognition for their efforts unless someone has explained the strange necessity of claiming a benefit they cannot actually receive to establish an 'underlying entitlement' to it. There is surely something intrinsically unfair and absurd in not simply having a handful of extra questions on the Pension Credit claim form to define carer status and trigger payment of the premium, but sadly that is only one illustration of how poorly carers are served by the Social Security system.
The position for working-age carers hit a new low last year when - we must hope by accidental oversight - the £100 per week earnings threshold for Carers Allowance was overtaken by the wages due for 16 hours at the minimum wage. At a stroke, it became impossible to qualify for both Carers Allowance and Working Tax Credit, a cruel financial blow to many low-paid part-time workers - particularly lone parents - with caring responsibilities. The planned uprating of benefits from April 2014 leaves the earning limit for carers at £100 per week despite lobbying to increase it, so perhaps the failure to adjust it for the minmum wage rise was conspiracy rather than cock-up after all.
The earnings limit is itself a ridiculous concept - a guillotine worse even than the steep tapers we're more used to in the Social Security system. Earn even a few pence over and for that week you're ineligible for any Carers Allowance at all; stay under by a matter of pennies, and the full benefit is paid. It's equally ridiculous to have a 35 hour minimum caring commitment, with no scope to recognise either shared care or a higher number of hours.
As a first step to properly recognising the value of carers to all society, surely it shouldn't be too much to ask the next Government to bring Carers Allowance into line with the disability benefits it complements and make it completely non means-tested and fully disregarded, or if it is to remain an 'earnings replacement' benefit to raise it to reflect what it would cost the state to provide 35 hours of care at no less than the minimum wage. In time, a more flexible system allowing Carers Allowance to be awarded for fewer hours or split pro-rata between an individual's carers must be the aim, if society is to care for our carers.
