can 2 people claim Carers Allowance

Hello,
We’ve had an enquiry from a carer whose father needs someone with him full time and two family members are going to take turns caring for him 10 days on/10 days off (or similar) with him.
The two carers both live a long distance away from their dad and neither would be able to take on the whole caring task and move in with the father.
The question we’ve been asked is would each family member be able to claim some carers allowance for those full weeks that they are caring?

I’ve had a look at DMG Chapter 60 and p60025 says “The conditions for entitlement are that the claimant
1. is engaged in caring for a severely disabled person for any day”

p60035 says “For the caring condition to be satisfied in any week, claimants must show that in that
week they
1. are or
2. are likely to be
engaged and regularly engaged in caring for a severely disabled person for at least 35 hours a week”

So if they stuck to a 7 day or 14 day alternation I can’t see any clear reason why they would not be able to each be eligible for the weeks they are doing the caring. I’m thinking they may have to make a declaration each week in the same way as people whose wages vary have to provide details of their wages regularly.

Please am I missing anything here, or has anyone any experience of this sort of arrangement?
Thank you
Sean

I’ve no experience of this practice. Just a reminder that for CA a qualifying week is defined as “a period of 7 days beginning with Sunday”. Something like a 10 day rotation seems complicated, they would have to always co-ordinate between them who was going to accumulate the 35 hours and claim for the ‘shared’ weeks.

Hi Sean,
CPAG p 550, only one person can qualify for CA for caring for the same disabled person, if you cannot agree the DWP will decide

Whilst I also have no experience of this, I would hazard that - even if it is possible - it would require a fresh claim to be made, decided and relinquished every single week. Unless the carers have the patience of Job and are able to absorb late payments pretty regularly, it would not be something I would encourage.

If you run all the qualifying criteria over both potential applicants, neither could retain eligibility

You are only allowed a four week break in any 26 week period, and you must have provided at least 35 hours of care per week for at least 22 out of the last 26 weeks

Many thanks for your replies.
Always useful to get other people’s thoughts.
Regards,
Sean

Brian Fletcher - 03 March 2016 10:37 PM

If you run all the qualifying criteria over both potential applicants, neither could retain eligibility

You are only allowed a four week break in any 26 week period, and you must have provided at least 35 hours of care per week for at least 22 out of the last 26 weeks

Isn’t that only where you want to keep the claim going and retain entitlement to CA during a temporary break? Whereas this question is about very short claims with non-entitlement in between (so that the other person can claim instead for those periods)?

I suppose that if circs dictate that the caring pattern has to be as described, then one carer couldn’t benefit from the temporary break rule anyway, as Brian described, so there might be nothing to lose by trying alternating claims.

As Elliot says, even if technically possible, it’s going to be difficult to manage in practice. Perhaps it could be done retrospectively, i.e. claim CA every 3 months with backdating, and declare the “off” weeks within the backdate period so as to give closed periods of non-entitlement ..?? I can see why you want to hear from someone who has actually tried this.