The Lemon Fool

Asking for a friend, not myself. They have a long-term irreversible health condition, which is progressive but they are currently managing to still work, just about. However recently due to the company being short-staffed and their own need for money - they are on minimum wage - they've felt obliged to take on a fair amount of overtime. This has placed additional physical and mental stress on the individual with the result they have been forced to take several days off sick. My question is, basically, is there any likelihood of them being eligible for in-work benefits on account of their disability? So as they can continue to work, for the time being, yet not have to work overtime to pay the bills? Or is it all-or-nothing?

PIP is about supporting people of working age to handle their disability. It does not matter if people work or not. Other in work benefits can have a disability element, but depend mainly on things like whether or not the individual has children or rents their home.

johnhemming wrote:PIP is about supporting people of working age to handle their disability. It does not matter if people work or not. Other in work benefits can have a disability element, but depend mainly on things like whether or not the individual has children or rents their home.

Thank you. To complicate matters, they have a 16-year-old grandchild living with them, who works part-time but has dropped out of college - so presumably they're not entitled to anything on that score, but the other question is, do they have to declare them as another adult living in the household or does that only apply to over-18s?

Benefits law is quite complex and it is nigh on impossible to give good advice in a forum because there are lots of factors. Adults are people who are 18 and over. However, there are lots of different bits of rules that apply for different things and I cannot really suggest anything. I stopped doing Welfare Advice in 2015 and the law will have changed since then. If they want advice they need to go and see an organisation that offers advice or try contacting someone online. Potentially they could contact their MPs office about this. (That is the role in which I did benefits advice. i also handled advice as a councillor.)

They can get help from Citizens Advice. There is much information on their website, but as others have said, it is a complex area and CitA will be able to advise independently and then they can decide whether to go through the claim process. They can help with that too. It can be lengthy and difficult, but often decisions can be challenged and overturned if the case is good.

I worked on the PIP programme in 2011. As far as I recall PIP is like DLA and is not means tested and the presence of another person in the house does not make any difference to you claim. As an example I'm on a 6 figure income and my son is on DLA - my income and my wife's make no difference to his claim. Carer's allowance on the other hand is affected by income, so when my wife started working again after 14 years off to look after our son the carer's allowance stopped overnight.

But the only way to find out is to apply - your friend will lose nothing by applying.