Is settled status retrospective and does it give rights to benefits

My EU client is financially responsible for her brothers aged 25 and 31 who are severely disabled.  She has worked here since 2007 and they joined her in 2008 and she has been financially supporting them ever since, although they do both get PIP.

Recently both the brothers applied for UC and were refused due to having no R2R, and my client has requested MRs of the decisions.  However their only possible route into R2R is as dependant extended family members of my client, but they did not have residence cards at the time of the claims so I think the cases are not arguable on this basis.

Since the UC decisions my client has obtained settled status for her brothers and from reading other threads I am under the impression that this will be enough for them to show R2R for benefits - is this correct? 

They did not have this in place at the time of the previous UC refusals - is it retrospective to the point at which they had been here for 5 years or does it only start from date of application?  In other words can they use the newly acquired settled status to argue for the previous claims to be awarded or do they need to make new claims? 

Is settled status retrospective and does it give rights to benefits

No it isn’t retrospective and yes it appears to give access to benefits.