Income support or JSA?

My client is a single parent.  Her 19 year old son is severely disabled and receives ESA and MRC/LRM DLA.  She also has a 9 year old son.  She claims income support as a carer.

The older son is going to residential college in September.  He will come home for holidays and occasional weekends.  He will therefore lose his DLA care component during term time, and hence his mum will lose her CA/IS.  She will be unable to claim IS as a lone parent from October due to the age limit change.

So that leaves her with claiming JSA during termtime and IS during holidays -( ie when his care component would be reinstated). How will this work in practice? I think it ‘s likely to be really unwieldy and be a bit of a nightmare.  Does anyone have experience of this?.  And how will JSA treat her claim if she is only able to work during termtime? Would that be seen as an unreasonable restriction on her availability to work?

Look forward to your thoughts.

i suppose she would be told she should get a job in a school, so that she would not be at work when her son is home for the school holidays…

JSA Regulations, reg 14 (t) and (u) would apply (introduced from November 2008).

Reg 14 prescribes circumstances in which someone is deemed to be available for work. These include:

(t) he is looking after a child for whom he has caring responsibilities during the school holidays or another similar vacation period and it would be unreasonable for him to make other arrangements for the care of that child.

(u) is about children who have been excluded from school and is not receiving home education from the LEA.

Of course she could claim working tax credit with the childcare element as well.
There is a right of appeal about whether or not other arrangments are reasonable.

Thanks for your comments, that is helpful.

Now I’m going to be unhelpful: 14(t) won’t work because the son isn’t a child, being 19 and on ESA.

Now to be more helpful. We have dealt with this situation. First point is that the mother needs to be on the ball recording all the dates (and times!) her son is home, and periodically informing both DLA and CA.

Then the crucial fact is that the disabled son is home some weekends (and maybe half term?). The provisions the mother can then use are:
- that she is entitled to CA during any week (Sunday-Saturday) during which she clocks up 35 hours caring. Friday evening to Monday morning won’t give her 35 hours in any one week, but midday Friday to midday Monday would give her two weeks
- that she is entitled to IS as a carer for 8 weeks after the last period when she ceased to satisfy the normal rules for carer entitlement: for instance receipt of Carers Allowance (Sch.1B, para.5, IS Regs).

Basically then, provided she can arrange for her son to be home for at least a long weekend, at least once each term she need never lose IS entitlement as a carer.

Can be done. Lots of palaver and some arguments, especially with IS, to be expected. Still a better option than JSA I think.

Richard Atkinson

Oh yes, of course, that is a good plan.  She tells me he will be home every half term, so there will never be a period of him being away for more than 8 weeks.  Funnily enough, when I rang the Jobcentre to ask about all this, they didn’t mention the IS entitlement carrying on for 8 weeks.  But I hope this will work, and should be easier than swapping between JSA and IS.  Many thanks for your advice.