It's a difficult one as there is currently no provision for 'split' claims for Child Tax Credit, Child Benefit, Income Support, etc, although there have been a few Human Rights (Article 8) challenges. In cases like these your client could claim CTC & CB and leave it up to the Inland Revenue decide who should be treated as the parent with responsibility-your client would have a right of appeal against their decision if negative to her, but whatever the outcome only one of the child's parents would recieve the benefit. In relation to the HB, you could ask the LA to re-refer the case to the Rent Officer incuding the child as well as your client as an occupier of the property (although as with other benefits the LA can only treat one parent as having responsibility for the child- not both)and/or request Discretionary Housing Payments. Think there was a thread on the HB discussion forum recently on a similar subject?
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