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Autism and Universal Credit

My son is autistic, and not able to communicate, so I deal with everything for him. He is a new claimant for Universal Credit having become an adult. As a disabled child, he received child tax credits and child benefit as well as PIP. Now that he is only getting UC and PIP, his money has dropped by £109.50 per WEEK. He will also have to carry on paying £14.60 each week towards his respite care, which is compulsory no matter what your income. I can hardly believe that this is lawful. If he did not have his PIP, we could not afford to exist.
Replies
Sorry to hear this, it sounds like a very stressful situation for you. Is there anything at all that we can help you with?
Hi Ami2301,
I just wondered if anyone else has discovered that new claimants for UC are offered no transitional top up benefit from the child tax credits they had to drop just because they are now an adult. It is so unfair. I think as more young disabled people have to claim UC under these conditions there will have to be something done about it. My income is only £114 per week at the moment, so I am struggling.
Does your son get PIP at the enhanced rate? I'm amazed that the DWP don't use the PIP assessment as evidence of capability, especially when we had to jump through so many hoops to get PIP in the first place. So your son is just getting the basic UC rate like mine? How long does the appeal take? My heart goes out to you, it really does. As if we haven't enough stress in our lives.
The whole idea is just ridiculous, and if the experience worsened your son's condition(s), who is then responsible? I'm guessing no-one, and as usual the family has to take the fallout. Ian Duncan Smith needs hauling over the coals for this mess. Good luck with the appeal.
I am totally with you on this as we have also been on the treadmill of UC since August 31st. From my own experience, the DWP staff who are meant to be there to help us are giving conflicting information or in many cases no information at all about further benefits we are entitled to claim for our young so called 'adults' with disabilities. Even the .gov.uk website states that some of these additional benefits are no longer available as of 2017, but that is not true. Your social worker is likely to be as clueless as mine, but she/he may ask the welfare benefits department to ring you and offer advice. If she does this, be sure to have your questions written down ready, because if you're anything like most of us single parents struggling to get what we can for our children (not by any means adults), it is easy to become emotional, and hard as it is we must stay solid for our kids.
I had to ask the DWP for a Work capabilty assessment for my son which decides whether he is entitled to the Limited Capability for Work and work related activity benefit. This could amount to an extra £80 per week for your son. I found it is best to ask for this on the help line because they tend to ignore your journal entries for up to 2 weeks and then they don't answer your questions properly. However this extra benefit may not be payable until 14 weeks after the UC benefit has started. Try and get someone to help you fill in the form you will get in the post because they may decide from the information you provide that that is sufficient to qualify without the assessment.
I too have health conditions of my own so I completely understand where you are coming from. This new system is specifically designed to put us off claiming, I have no doubt about that.
Do let me know how things are going with you. We can maybe learn from one other. I wish you luck. Remember to take care of yourself.
Scope
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