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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

wca UC childcare costs

Diogenes
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welfare benefits, citizens advice, sherwood & newark

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Help please, my client gets UC with child care costs, her [ new ] partner is unable to work and has a sick note, UC have stopped childcare as they say the partner can look after the child, the partner cannot look after child due to his illness. is it correct my client is not entitled to child care cost until a wca has been done on the partner, any other options ?????
Thanks you

UB40
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Debt and Welfare Advice, Community Money Advice, Launceston

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Unfortunately you are correct if the rules sent to me in 2017 by the DWP still apply…..

The work condition

To meet the work condition the claimant or both claimants in a joint claim must satisfy one of the following:

· be in paid work (either employed or self-employed)

· have accepted an offer of paid work due to start before the end of the next assessment period

· have stopped paid work in the current or previous assessment period

· be in the first or second assessment period of a new claim, and stopped paid work no more than one calendar month before the date of their initial claim

There are exceptions to the work condition where one claimant in a household is working, and the partner is one of the following: · has Limited Capability for Work or Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity · has regular and substantial caring responsibilities for a severely disabled person (link is external)

· is temporarily absent from the claimant’s household for six month or more, for example in prison, hospital or residential care

When a claimant is getting any of the following, childcare costs can be claimed as they are treated as being in work:

· statutory sick pay

· statutory maternity pay

· ordinary statutory paternity pay

· shared parental pay

· statutory adoption pay

· maternity allowance

UB40
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Debt and Welfare Advice, Community Money Advice, Launceston

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So looking again at the above .....the SSP route?

Charles
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Accountant, Haffner Hoff Ltd, Manchester

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Diogenes - 16 June 2021 10:49 AM

Help please, my client gets UC with child care costs, her [ new ] partner is unable to work and has a sick note, UC have stopped childcare as they say the partner can look after the child, the partner cannot look after child due to his illness. is it correct my client is not entitled to child care cost until a wca has been done on the partner, any other options ?????
Thanks you

Yes, the regs specifically require that the member of the couple not in work has to be “unable to provide childcare because that person [...] has limited capability for work”.

Once the partner is found to have LCW, you could try and get the childcare element backdated. The wording used (“has limited capability for work”) is the same as that used for the work allowance, and reportedly people have been successful in getting the work allowance backdated. See this thread.

Va1der
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Welfare Rights Officer with SWAMP Glasgow

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If the partner has the NI record he could try claiming nsESA. Unlike in UC he would be considered to have LCW while he waits for the assessment.

Charles
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Va1der - 17 June 2021 09:55 AM

If the partner has the NI record he could try claiming nsESA. Unlike in UC he would be considered to have LCW while he waits for the assessment.

Unfortunately that wouldn’t help for childcare purposes (or, in general, for UC at all).

Va1der
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I felt like I was missing something as I was writing that post. Is it because that reg is for ESA, and only has meaning within that benefit (i.e. to remove work search etc)?

Elliot Kent
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ESA treats a claimant as having LCW during the initial period of the claim, which is sufficient to meet the basic condition of entitlement for ESA, but a person only has LCW for the purposes of UC where they have been determined to have it by a WCA or where one of the deeming provisions of sch. 8 applies. See reg 39.