\n<\/p>\n
The carer\u2019s allowance benefit should be overhauled and the basic rate of payment increased to lift more unpaid carers and disabled people out of financial hardship, according to a living standards thinktank.<\/p>\n
The Resolution Foundation said unpaid carers on low incomes were paying a \u201cvery heavy price\u201d \u2013 a typical penalty of 10% or as much as \u00a37,000 a year compared with non-carers \u2013 for looking after loved ones full-time.<\/p>\n
It called for the basic rate of carer\u2019s allowance \u2013 currently the lowest-value benefit at \u00a383.30 a week \u2013 to be raised to at least the \u00a392.05-a-week rate of jobseeker\u2019s allowance to help improve miserable living standards for the poorest carers.<\/p>\n
It also called for the removal of the notorious \u201ccliff-edge\u201d penalty on carer\u2019s allowance claimants\u2019 earnings, currently capped at \u00a3196 a week, to enable more unpaid carers to supplement incomes with part-time work.<\/p>\n
The harshness of the cliff-edge earnings penalty, coupled with failures in the handling of carer benefits by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), caused hundreds of thousands of carers to unwittingly run up huge overpayment debts in recent years.<\/p>\n
Resolution\u2019s report comes as the disability policy expert Liz Sayce prepares to hand ministers her independent review of the carer\u2019s allowance \u2013 commissioned in response to an award-winning Guardian investigation into the treatment of vulnerable unpaid carers by the DWP.<\/p>\n
Hannah Slaughter, the Resolution Foundation\u2019s senior economist, said ministers need to review support across the board for unpaid carers: \u201cThe trend of rising levels of disability across Britain, and the need for unpaid care, isn\u2019t going to end. It\u2019s time policy caught up with this reality,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
About two-thirds of unpaid carers experienced material deprivation \u2013 defined as the inability to afford essential items such as food and energy \u2013 while carer social security benefits were often inadequate to protect family incomes, Resolution said.<\/p>\n
Despite UK family members effectively providing \u00a3184bn a year of unpaid care to loved ones, the value of carer\u2019s allowance has fallen in the last two decades from 32% of full-time earnings at the minimum wage to just 19%, it found.<\/p>\n
Bringing the relative value of carer\u2019s allowance back up to 1999 levels of 32% would boost the benefit by \u00a353.45 a week to \u00a3136.75, at a cost of \u00a32.9bn a year, the Resolution report said. An alternative would be to raise carer\u2019s allowance rates in England and Wales to \u00a394.60 a week, in line with the enhanced rates in place in Scotland.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Slaughter said: \u201cThere are now over a million working-age families in Britain that include both a disabled person and an unpaid carer \u2013 and they are paying a heavy financial price for these circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cMore must be done to boost the living standards of disabled people and their carers. Employers should improve their retention of disabled staff and carers, and the government should raise the value of unpaid care in the benefits system and extend carers\u2019 leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Emily Holzhausen, the director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, said: \u201cThe evidence from the Resolution Foundation\u2019s report adds even more impetus for change to improve carers\u2019 benefits, especially after the scandal of overpayments of carer\u2019s allowance and potential cuts to welfare benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n A government spokesperson said: \u201cWe understand the huge difference carers make, as well as the struggles so many face.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why we have raised the carer\u2019s allowance earnings threshold by \u00a345 a week to \u00a3196, benefiting more than 60,000 carers by 2029-30. This is the biggest ever cash increase in the earnings threshold for carer\u2019s allowance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have also launched an independent review into social care, part of which will explore the needs of unpaid carers who provide vital care and support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The carer\u2019s allowance benefit should be overhauled and the basic rate of payment increased to lift more unpaid carers and disabled people out of financial hardship, according to a living standards thinktank. The Resolution Foundation said unpaid carers on low incomes were paying a \u201cvery heavy price\u201d \u2013 a typical penalty of 10% or as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4388,4387,321,1015,183,322],"class_list":{"0":"post-11130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-allowance","9":"tag-carers","10":"tag-ministers","11":"tag-overhaul","12":"tag-raise","13":"tag-urged"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}