benefit cap urgern help please,

kinship carer, client has 4 children not her own, new cap applied any help available,

As I understand it a kinship carer is usually a foster carer: the children are looked after by the local authority and placed in the foster care of a relative.  Those children are then excluded from the claimant’s HB assessment and she cannot get CTC for them but should be receiving payments from Children’s Services instead.  In that case capping would be unlikely, near enough impossible in fact.  Or is this some other kind of arrangement - the one that springs to mind is “special guardianship”, where the children are included as part of the benefit family while payments from the LA are still disregarded.

If the client is a special guardian the Council might (depending on how much she has been capped by) say that she does not need a DHP because of the disregarded payments from Children’s Services - if that is the key variable it could be argued she is less in need of a DHP than someone with four of their own kids.  It may be that Children’s Services would consider increasing the amount they pay in order to prevent the arrangement from being undermined and fixing them with a more expensive duty under the Children Act.  If this is a unitary authority they might put their heads together and say “well at least a DHP is government money, we’re not funding it” ... but that would depend how the budget is looking.

All in all, quite a few possible permutations.  Could you specify the exact nature of the arrangement (fostered or something else) and also how she has come to be capped - what is the benefit profile, how do the figures stack up.

Hi, thanks for that, it seems client is just claiming cb ctc for the children with no income from LA or SS as far as I know, she is arriving shortly for advice so I will find out more then oh she gets wrag esa
Regards

It may be an informal private kinship arrangement in that case, so she is de facto responsible for the children in the eyes of benefit decision makers.  Anyway, if you can provide some figures it might help to identify the most promising options.

just found out cl is a special guardian and income could well mitigate against a dhp other options may apply, dla and carers allowance might be available many thanks HB,