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Which benefit should he claim?

FayeDownesFayeDownes Member Posts: 1 Listener
edited June 2019 in What benefits am I entitled to?
I’m a care provider for a young man, via  shared lives programme.  He is 23 and attends college.  Yesterday he didn’t receive his income support as they say they will only pay for full time education until he reaches 21. He has a mild to moderate learning disability.  He never received a letter or a phone call to let us know.  He can now claim either universal credit, job seekers or ESA.  No one seems to know the best benefit to claim.  Any ideas as all three is much lower in terms of pay from income support.
any help will be welcomed
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Replies

  • steve51steve51 Member Posts: 7,175 Disability Gamechanger
    Hi @FayeDownes

    Good Evening it’s great to meet you today.

    I am one of the Community Champion’s here at Scope.

    We have got a “Benefit Calculater” here on our site.

    This will give us a list of Benefits that maybe available for us to look at.

    We can then go through each one to see what will be the best !!!!!

    Please please let me know how you feel ????

    @steve51
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  • poppy123456poppy123456 Member Posts: 22,218 Disability Gamechanger
    edited May 2019
    Hi,

    All areas are now a full Universal Credit area so the only benefit that maybe possible to claim is this. Although i am a little confused why he was able to claim Income Support to begin with, students haven't been able to claim this for a very long time. Are you sure it was Income Support he was claiming and not ESA?

    As he's over the age of 21 does he receive a student loan?

    Does he receive DLA or PIP?
    Proud winner of the 2019 empowering others award. This award was given for supporting disabled people and their families for the benefit advice I have given to members here on the community.
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  • Adrian_ScopeAdrian_Scope Testing team Posts: 7,955

    Scope community team
    Hi @FayeDownes and welcome to the community. :)

    I've just been reading up a little more about Shared Lives, have you been involved with them long?
    As for advising you, if you're able at all to answer Poppy's questions we'll be much positioned to support you! :smile:
    Senior Community Partner
    Scope

    Your feedback is really important to the development of the online community, so please remember to complete our online community annual survey. 
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  • mikehughescqmikehughescq Member Posts: 6,010 Disability Gamechanger
    If he’s a Shared Lives case then the conversation about benefits needs to take place with the appropriate local authority, especially if they have an internal welfare rights team familiar with the scheme. In many cases the SL team takes full responsibility for sorting benefits e.g. http://sharedlivessw.org.uk/contact/funding-and-benefits-team/. I’m not sure this is appropriate for an Internet forum especially as you’ve posted under your own name which may make the young man in question identifiable.

    Do not start a UC claim before checking in with the SL team as there’s generally no easy way out of UC and a better off calc may need to be done before any claim is made as the losses on UC can be significant.

    @steve51 online benefit calculators are of no use in a situation like this and ought not to be recommended other than for situations where a person knows which means-tested benefit they need to claim and simply want to know how much it will be. 


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