kinship care and benefit cap

I have a tenant who has 2 children and receives kinship care for a 3rd, she has had HB reduced. I thought I had read that kinship care was exempt from this cap. Can anyone shed any light on this..

she receives IS and CTC

In England, kinship normally refers to fostering by a relative: the child is in local authority care.  Fostered children do not get aggregated into the HB assessment at all - no allowance in the applicable amount, no bedroom.  However, on the plus side, all of the fostering allowance is ignored as income and the claimant is entitled to one extra bedroom just for being a foster carer.

In Scotland though I have a feeling that kinship care means something different - you might know better than I do?

As far as benefit cap exemption is concerned, it is Guardians Allowance that exempts you - this is a Child Benefit supplement paid to people who have an orphaned child in their family.  The child is aggregated in the normal way for size criteria and applicable amount purposes.

Not to be confused with “special guardianship”, which is another kind of local authority placement but more permanent than fostering: a child for whom the HB claimant is a special guardian is included in the HB assessment in the normal way, but does not confer any exemption from the benefit cap.  The allowance from the local authority is ignored as income though.  Again, this might be called something different in Scotland?

I am surprised that the benefit cap is an issue for someone with two or three children in Glasgow - maybe the above comments will help you to work out whether there is something else going on here instead?

The amount that is received from the LA in kinship payments is not included as income but any benefits the tenant gets for the 3rd child i.e. CB and CTC are included. 3 x CTC approx £171 per week, 3 x CB £48 plus legacy benefit IS/JSA £73.10 = £292.10, cap is £384.62 so any family with a rent over £92.52 would be affected. Even in the social rented sector £93 for rent is not that unusual and rent for a 3 bedroom family home could be considerably higher, never mind those in private lets.

HB Anorak - we have nearly 200 families affected in the neighbouring council to Glasgow, before the cap was lowered it was less than 30 families. Rents are not as low as some people might think, even in the social rented sector as the example I gave shows. My own RSL rent is £104 per week (and rising 3-4% every year) for a 2 bedroom house.

Ooops, I should have done the sums more carefully for three dependants shouldn’t I.

Thanks for clarifying kinship care in Scotland.  Sounds like it is very similar to what we call special guardianship in England.  So they have normal entitlement to benefits plus a disregarded allowance. In England the allowance is means tested by reference to benefit income, which would compensate for the ben cap.  Is that how it is in Scotland too?

Sounds identical to me, kinship care max allowance minus child related benefits = kinship payment. Seems simple when expressed like that…. I leave that side of things to the Social Workers 😊