Need income support advice

Farta

I am a single  parent of 5 years  old with special needs  he has not been assessed  yet
He goes to school half day i had a job that i havent been sinds i been told about my boy
I owe money to the lanlord 
I wanted to claim income support 
But i am worried they dont accept
So please  if any one knows what to do 
Help me out with the information  
Thank you 

Sam_Alumni

HI @Farta welcome to the community.  Can you explain a little more? 

Do you get any support from school or doctors for your son? Do you have a good relationship with your landlord? Can you chat with them?  

There is a benefits calculator here that might be useful to you.

Farta

Thank you  so much

BenefitsTrainingCo

Dear Farta,

Because your son is 5, you can only claim income support (IS) if he is getting Disability Living Allowance (DLA). If he gets DLA at the middle or higher rate care component, and you care for him at least 35 hours a week, then you can get Carer's Allowance (CA). I'm assuming in this answer that you are not working and have no earnings at the moment, as you say you haven't been to your job since you were told about your boy (I am not sure if you mean the diagnosis here). If you are still employed, you need to talk to your employer about what sort of leave you are on now. You may be able to take parental leave, but this is temporary (it's 18 weeks per child until they are 18, but most employers won't let you take it all at once). 

On top of the CA, you can claim income support. If you get income support, you can then claim housing benefit (all of these things require separate claims). You can find out how to claim all of these benefits on gov.uk, but for housing benefit, you will need to know your local authority and apply to their housing benefit department. If you usually get Working Tax Credit (WTC), that cannot continue if you stop working for more than 4 weeks. Whilst you get WTC, that may mean you have too much income to get IS as well, but then you could get IS if you are off work for more than 4 weeks. 

The advice will be different if universal credit (UC) has started for your circumstances in your area. You can check this by entering your postcode here. If it has started for parents who care for disabled children, then you would have to claim UC instead of income support and housing benefit. If that is the case, UC will also replace your tax credits, which will stop. Your child benefit will continue. 

You should talk to your landlord as soon as possible about the rent arrears and explain you are trying to sort things out. 

Because it's complicated, you might want to talk to a specialist organisation - for example, Gingerbread who advise single parents, or Contact a Family who advise the parents of disabled children. 

Will