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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Children and childcare  →  Thread

UC child element when there is Special Guardainship Order and payments

Jane Urwin
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Northumbrian CAB

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The client is a Special Guardian for 2 grandchildren age 6 and 10. She gets £535 every 2 weeks for them from the local authority as a Special Guardians payment. She gets child benefit for both children.
She has just had to start a claim for UC.
She told JCP about the payments for the children and was told to ask whether these would affect her UC via her UC journal. A message came back saying that her UC claim was suspended until she removes the 2 children from the UC claim.
She has done this and then came for advice.
We rang the UC helpline and were told that the UC claim is now reinstated but that she cannot have the Child elements of UC and Special Guardians payments.
They were unable to say which regulation they were following for this. UC helpline state she will get standard allowance for single person and housing element of 2 bedroom LHA rate.
I can’t find any clarification on whether she should be excluded from getting the child elements of UC - can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

Elliot Kent
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Shelter

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The reason you can’t find any legislation to support what UC are saying is because they are talking tripe.

The child element is payable if they are responsible for a child (reg 29, UC Regs 2013), i.e. in the first place that the child normally lives with them (reg 4). We assume that these two children normally live with your client and nobody else - so she is entitled to the child element for them. Should be pretty straightforward - whether she is a special guardian or whether she receives child benefit doesn’t even need to come into it although it ought to clear up any doubts. (That the child element is payable to special guardians is, at any rate, illustrated by the fact that it’s one of the exclusions to the “2 child” rule - para 4(2)(b), Schedule 12).

But even if that is wrong and she is not entitled to the child element, this is not remotely the right way to deal with the situation. If she has included two children on her claim and the DWP think that in the circumstances she is not entitled to any element for them, then fine - make a decision to that effect which she can then challenge if so advised. Insisting that she be the one who goes on to the claim and deletes the children and threatening simply not to pay her anything until she does so is just not right at all - it’s not her job to identify whether she is entitled to the child element or not, she just reports the facts to them and they make the decision.

(I am guessing that what has happened is that the system is telling the Case Manager “this lady is entitled to two child elements” and the Case Manager is trying to override that but can’t for whatever reason so they have directed your client to remove the kids as a workaround.)

The seperate question is then whether the SGA will be treated as income for the purposes of the UC claim. I’d have to check that when I get back to the office but the general position is that there is a list of categories of unearned income in reg 66. If it’s not on the list, then it doesn’t count as income. I don’t think that SGA or anything analogous is on the list so I don’t think it ought to count as income.

But if it does count as income, then I can’t see what difference it would make excluding the child elements from the claim. Surely it would be income either way.

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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Sounds like DWP is confusing special guardianship with the child being a looked after chid.  They are wanting to treat the claimant as a foster carer (hence the second bedroom they want to allow). This is not the case: special guardianship and looked after children are covered by different parts of the Children Act - a special guardian is treated the same way as a conventional birth parent for social security purposes.  As for the allowance, no Reg 66 doesn’t list it so it is disregarded (which is what happens in the legacy benefits as well - it’s a thank you for taking on the guardianship I suppose).

Jon (CANY)
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Welfare benefits - Craven CAB, North Yorkshire

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We’ve seen a similar thing before, where the UC “decision-maker” apparently can’t get the system to do what they want, so as a work-around they ask the claimant to report a false change of circs on the journal.

I feel that complaints really need to be escalated about this sort of thing, it can’t be allowed to become a general practice. The potential for detriment to the claimant could be huge.

ClairemHodgson
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Jon (CHDCA) - 19 December 2018 10:55 AM

We’ve seen a similar thing before, where the UC “decision-maker” apparently can’t get the system to do what they want, so as a work-around they ask the claimant to report a false change of circs on the journal.

I feel that complaints really need to be escalated about this sort of thing, it can’t be allowed to become a general practice. The potential for detriment to the claimant could be huge.

especially when the fraud team know no law, and when the law says you have to tell the DWP the truth! AND that, i gather from what everyone has said, what goes on journal doesn’t necessarily stay there as a permanent record.. (never mind if the request to remove was made on the journal in the first place, i assume not).....

Jane Urwin
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Northumbrian CAB

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Many thanks for the replies - much appreciated.

Jane Urwin
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Northumbrian CAB

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Update:
Client received first UC payment on time but no child elements and only one bedroom rate for housing element.
Note in journal by client and issues raised by client at JCP. No reply to journal entry and JCP said not their problem.

Call to UC helpline today direct to case manager was met with many apologies and explanation of their frustrations. Also said that staff are working weekends etc to try and clear backlog. We were told that journal entries are low priority for UC staff so telephone is preferable.

Outcome is that housing element is being revised today and issue re: child elements is still with a decision maker and decision should be made by 19th January BUT this is unlikely to happen on time due to workload and we will need to escalate this if no decision is made on 19th January.
Meanwhile client has an under-payment of over £550!
To be continued ..............

BC Welfare Rights
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The Brunswick Centre, Kirklees & Calderdale

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Jane Urwin - 14 January 2019 10:14 PM


We were told that journal entries are low priority for UC staff so telephone is preferable.

We are also hearing this a lot in all aspects of UC (other than the initial claim). Makes a bit of a nonsense of the whole digital by default concept

janebu
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Bridge Project Citizens Advice Northumberland

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Good news - client came back to tell me that the housing element has been corrected and now the two children are included and the child elements have been paid. All backdated to the start of the claim.

While the money was important the client said that the thing that upset her most was that the children had been disregarded.