The Care Allowance Overpayment Issue
There has been a lot of attention on unpaid carers in recent years, so I thought I’d bring together what we know, what has been published and post that here across 2 blogs. This first blog covers the background and historical issues covering why unpaid carers are in the spotlight.
May ‘24
In April 2024, news reports resurrected the challenges that unpaid carers have faced for years, accidentally claiming over their Carer’s Allowance threshold. More unpaid carers were interviewed leading up to the election, revealing heartening stories of the financial and emotional hardships that they experience on a day-to-day basis as well as the additional guilt placed on them with this debt.
Historic issue
Believe it or not, the issue of overpayments has been on the Department of Work and Pension’s radar since 2010 (House of Commons Overpayment Report, 2019); since then levels of overpayment have remained static, despite repeated calls for a system overhaul (ibid). In the report, the Work and Pension’s Committee identified system errors and staffing shortages responsible for unpaid carers ‘making honest mistakes’ with the forms that affected their claims (BBC Money Box, 2024). Yet, in May 2024, the then government doubled-down on their commitment to recover the money owed to them totalling approximately £250 million.
Government saving
The Care Allowance does not go far and many claimants have been hit by the recent cost-of-living crisis, suffering fuel and food poverty. So while Rome burns, I looked through the smoke and wondered how much the government are saving when they are, in effect, exploiting caring family members and friends to foot the emotional and financial burden of caring. Unpaid carers are often surviving on very little money.
Example
-Unpaid adult carer on Universal Credit (incl housing benefit + child allowance for 2 of her children)
-Earns £100/wk from job
-3 children,
-Housing association tenant,
-Provides 35+ hours of unpaid care,
= £81.90/wk carers allowance.
To put that into real time, this individual would be caring for the equivalent of £2.34 an hour, where a private carer might charge the client or council £12-£20+/hr depending where they are in the UK.
This saved the previous government approximately £162 billion a year (Centre for Care & CarersUK, 2021). So in conclusion, for the government to rely more on unpaid carers, means that they save money in their budget. And the previous Conservative government demanded the overpayment to be paid back?