I saw a previous discusion on this. Can I clarify that for new claims of Carers Allowance there is no longer be a requirement to attend Jobcentre work focused interviews, however if the claiment is also receiving Income Support, there is still a requirement to attend (a WFI) i.e. you are only exempt if you are claiming Carers Allowance without Income Support? Also what happens to existing Carers Allowance claims?

Kirsty.

It's unbelieveabl really given carer gets £82.40 CA&IS and maybe H& CTB but if the person needing care was in hospital or care then the cost too the state would range from £500 to thousands of £s pw for specialist care. Yet the government feels carers arent contributing enough. Scandalious or what.

recent DWP guidance (in relation to the Social Security (Incapacity Benefit Work-focused Interviews Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 2005 (SI.No.2727/2005) that were published to rightsnet on 11 October 2005), refers to -

'... the removal of the requirement to take part in a WfI when only claiming CA, Bereavement Allowance or Widowed Parents Allowance ...

Nonetheless a person receiving CA, Bereavement Allowance or WPA may still be subject to WfIs if they are also receiving IS, IB or SDA.'

i found this memo a bit hard to follow - but i am in a rush at the moment and distracted by other things - it refers to requirements for WfIs, brought in under JSA bring 'deleted' - whatever that means in legal terms - which suggests to me they should not have been on the list in the first place. maybe it didn't have SSAC scrutiny again...

i still don't know from the memo why CA with IS or JSA attracts a WfI, or what a targeted benefit is in the context of the memo.

can't trust the DWP to be truthful - any geniuses out there know the legal basis of WfIs for carers and would they like to share?

Definetely not a genius posting here and I wouldn't attempt to look at the legal issue.

Only wanted to make this point :I seem to remember that the Carers' concession was made in response to lobbying by the Carers organisations and was announced as a far overdue change.

Via that 'spin' route nobody seem to have looked at the substance because, another group of carers that remains caught in the woofi pressure are the single parents who have to attend the 13 weekly interviews. There carers are also not exempt

also definitely not a genius, and unable to find several spare hours to sit down with the amendment, track down the original SI, and try to make sense of it all...but...but... this lone parent thing is not logical, as Mr. Spock would say.

the definition of lone parent embraces, well, lone parents, but are the reglations really intended to apply to all lone parents, or lone parents claiming IS or JSA AS lone parents?

Schedule 1B lists Prescribed Category of Person

no.1 is headed 'Lone Parent'.

no.4 is headed 'Person caring for another person'.

no. 7 is headed 'Persons incapable of Work'

etcetera.

as we know, it is possible to be a sick lone parent looking after a disabled person, and it is possible to qualify for IS on more than one basis. But is you satisfy conditions of entitlement under prescribed category of person no. 4 (Carer, for short), your lone parentness is incidental to the relevent CoEs for that prescribed category. Is it right that because you are incidentally a lone parent, you are embraced by the definition, even though you are not claiming as that category of person?

It would make sense, if a person satisfies 2 or more categories in Schedule 1, and 1 of those categories is exempt from woofis : ), that the exemption applies.

we know why this is so objectionable from the claimants' point of view, but why doesn't the DWP find doing senseless pointless work objectionable? <ducking>

how do we get a re-count? have the regs been misinterpreted?

jj

Sorry, joining this at a late stage, but may help to clarify some points. At Carers UK, we received many complaints when WFI's were introduced. Many were not about attending the WFI, but the way the original letters were worded. The DWP felt that WFI's were a carrot, but they were using a big stick - i.e. threatened loss of benefit, to ensure compliance. Initially, they agreed to tone down the letter; then the next step was to make WFI's voluntary - i.e all carers receive an invitation to attend a WFI. However, carers receiving CA can opt out. The DWP argument is that there are many carers who welcome the chance to attend these interviews. There may be some justification for this because worries about returning to the job market after a caring role ends was one of the concerns that was addressed in the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act. Supposedly, the rationale for insisting that people (or their partners)receiving IS
or IB attend is to discuss ways that they may get out of poverty associated with the low rate of benefits (nice catch 22!). We have regular meetings with CAU and their policy bods so I would be interested to have anecdotal or other feedback of people who have suffered from having to attend these interviews (e.g partners of people claiming IB with a dependent's addition instead of CA). One woman in this group had the serendipity effect of getting her husband on to the middle rate of DLA; then claiming CA in her own right and then getting her NI contributions. The WFI was the catalyst leading to this. There must still be some others who have found
attending the interview either difficult or a waste of time. By the way, the DWP insisted on keeping to Halloween as their trick date for all new WFI's. So if a carer had requested a deferment before that date for good reason; then the DWP reserved the right to insist that the carer be seen after 31/10. MPs should be contacted if carers are still unhappy to move the matter on further.

Jack- You ask for feedback about about people who have suffered by having to attend a work focused interview. Carers who are caring for someone who is terminally ill are being asked to attend wfis. I have had no trouble at all getting these waived when I have requested this but the letters cause distress, and are another thing for someone to have to sort out when they are already under stress. Many carers have just left work in order to provide care, and often have their job open for them to return to, so they don't see the point in having to travel to the JC to discuss work.

Also the wfi process lengthens the time it takes to process the claim. Even where the wfi is waived the paperwork has still had to be posted to the local office and then back to Preston. I had one case a while ago where the claim form went missing between Preston and the local office. The client had to complete a new one, and by this time her partner whom she was caring for had died and she had no income at all.

I have also been given conflicting information by the CA unit. Initially I was told that where the carer is caring for someone getting DLA/AA under the special rules their claim should not be sent to the local office for a wfi. Another person told me that everyone under 60 has to have a wfi? I was also told that carers were to be excluded from wfis but carers organisations wanted them to be included. I can appreciate what you have said that some people have benefited from them by getting advice about other benefit entitlement, but personally I have never come across anyone who has benefited in such a way, and have seen many times the anxiety and distress the letters about them cause. On one occasion a client with mental health problems withdrew his claim after being asked to attend a wfi. I said it could be waived but it was too late he could not be persuaded to continue with the claim. In my view the negatives far outweigh the positives.

If wfis for carers are now to be optional, will that mean that claim forms are still automatically sent to the local office, and then just returned if client declines wfi? Also how clear will it be that the wfi is only optional?

Apologies for the length of this post, as you can probably gather this is a real bug bear for me, particularly for people in the situations described above.

it's fairly easy to see why claimants perceive woofies as a stick not a carrot - it's because it's a stick. the gov't can paint it orange, but you have to be delusional to mistake it for a carrot, especially when you are being beaten with it. a service to assist does not have to be compulsory, with sanctions.

i've been looking at the SI's to answer some of my own questions, and bereavement benefits and carer allowance were in the original regs coming into force 8/7/02, but have now been taken out, yes from halloween. specified benefits are IS, IB, and SDA.

the regulations are empowered by sec 2A of the SS admin Act - 'Claim or full entitlement to certain benefits conditional on work focused interviews' - and i'd guess this is where the 'everyone under 60' bit comes in. Working age, right? It was added by the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, from rememberance day 1999.

The WR&P Act legislated for the second state pension, shared pension rights for partners, the change from AWT to PCA, and joint JSA claims. I've a feeling woofies may have got overshadowed in all this - ONE (what happened to that?) and JC+ were pilots and not nationally rolled out, but there- the primary legislation was put in place 6 years ago.

afaics, it enables the SoS to max out his power over SS entitlement legislation through control of the claims gateway - reg. 11 (prescribing the range of interview questions and actions) is now expanded, btw)- and may be seen as a major shift towards administrative (micromanagement) power over the statutory rights system.

it doesn't make a lot of sense to put a load of pressure on people to work who are claiming benefits intended for people whose circumstances are such that they are prevented from working - but obviously, this is old school thinking based on the premise of a social security system! i'm struggling quite a lot with SDA - what happens in these interviews - some sort of delegated laying on of hands, empowered by the prime ministerial faith healer himself?

obviously, a lot of carers will get waived or deferred, so it's a bit of a fine filtration system - (it's worth causing all of them grief to get the odd one or two off the books - and we can get their life history off them while we're at it??) i suspect that the dropping of interviews for CA and bereavement benefits has more to do with articulate middle-class claimants making clear their feelings in no uncertain terms about wholly inappropriate interviews by jobcentre staff, than representations by carer orgs( and is this right, i only heard it second hand - a tory MP complaining about jobcentre staff who don't have a clue what they're doing??).

i've had a bad IB day today. one client was examined by two doctors for PCA and collapsed in pain when the doctor 'helped' him put his arms behind his back - the 'trainee' cautioned the 'trainer'that client had said he couldn't do it... they asked if he had any complaints, but they didn't offer to send him home in a taxi, even though he was disoriented... and then they only gave him 13 points.

and then the guy who has been disqualified because he is 'detained in custody for a criminal conviction' - well, no, he was sat in front of me with his hospital discharge form and pile of medical evidence on his treatment for a brain tumour. i suspected a keystroke error, but talking to the person who may well be the last remaining sane DWP employee in birmingham, it seems the information came from the DLA unit from a GMS exercise - apparently he got 6 years.