DEMENTIA CARE: UNIVERSAL CREDIT MUGGED ME FOR £6.81.

This one is very specific. First, it’s a Scottish story. Exclusively so. Carer’s Allowance, run by the Department of Work and Pensions, transferred the benefit to Social Security Scotland. Triple-S renamed this as Carer Support Payment.
   There was going to be a painless, seamless, transfer. They told me this. From one week to the next, there’d be no disruption in payment. The money arrived from the DWP one week, and then THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY went to my bank account from SSS the next week. It’s a miracle. More than that, it was…
   Right on time.
   Just to recap, in case you aren’t keeping up with the maddening blur of events. I receive benefit, weekly, for being a carer. The source of the benefit moved from one department to another. I was promised a seamless transfer. The name changed but the pay’s the same.
   For complicated reasons, there’s another benefit. Enter the spectre at the feast. Universal Credit. Specifically, this was mentioned to me once, when I applied for it, as the Carer Component of Universal Credit. When I became a carer officially, I applied for Carer’s Allowance first.
   Why do that, if both benefits are for carers?
   With Carer’s Allowance, I could backdate the award if I’d been an unofficial carer. Six month’s of money. I’d been an unofficial carer for longer than that. With the basic carer benefit arranged and backdated, I was then advised to claim Universal Credit. You can’t backdate that claim six minutes, never mind six months.
   When I gained Universal Credit, that amount was reduced in accordance with the amount I gained from Carer’s Allowance. The government tips its hands on the scales and claws the money back. You don’t get two loads of cash aimed at carers. There’s an adjustment.
   But getting the money isn’t even remotely about getting the money. Certain benefits open up areas of the system to you. If you are a carer and you go on benefit, that’s a steady amount of cash tied to all that caring – reducing or limiting your chances of becoming bankrupt.
   It’s not a huge amount, but it is a steady amount – and that’s what counts. You are in the system. And the system unfolds before you.
   If you go bankrupt, you lose Power of Attorney. The system is happy to offer you respite care for breaks, which must be paid for. The same is true for daycare services and many other things. At that point, and at several other points in the process, you are asked about maximising income.
   The system likes to hear that you’ve done everything you could to secure all the carer benefits you are allowed to claim. That’s for the cared-for first and then for the carer as well. Safety for everyone involved. Double the safety, supposedly. Have you maximised the income?
   No one wants you to get in debt while paying for carer services. They want you to be plugged into the system officially. Then safeguards in the system help you through. Or they help most people. Should do.
   Gain the carer benefit. Join the system. Now you are admitted to several queues for services you must pay for. Do not go bankrupt, do not lose Power of Attorney, and absolutely do minimise disruption to lives that have already been blown to pieces.
   Dementia care automatically has support built in if you are part of the system. At first, I dealt with things unofficially. Was there even a diagnosis? Then we could go to the benefit side of things. Yes, people fall through the cracks in the system. They fall hard and land harder. It was my responsibility, my duty, to maximise income and guarantee a degree of safety and stability in a wildly uncertain world.
   (Looking at you, Covid, coming along to rain on my barbeque.)
   I’ve not gone into super-precise levels of detail here, as everyone’s case is different inside the same country. Across the world, your safety-net will vary in strength, size, and actual safety. I can only report on the Scottish side of things.
   So what’s this about the mugging?
   From one week to the next, I was paid the same amount. Seamless. It worked. For the old benefit turning into the new benefit, that is. Changing departments and changing names. But the other benefit, Universal Credit, operates under different rules and possibly new laws of physics. If the Carer’s Allowance/Carer Support Payment goes through any change, that can reflect on the Universal Credit award.
   I saw the transitional payments. They were fine. But then the Universal Credit payment came in for the month…and I was mugged over exactly £6.81. The amount I didn’t care about. And I still don’t. It was the fact that they did it, seemingly for no reason.
   Living the carer life, I don’t need petty shit like that annoying me. Annoy me it did. The loss of a fiver or a tenner I can survive. It’s the trivial pain of knowing I shouldn’t have to spend a second of the day away from caring to look at this nonsense.
   Getting information out of them was a not-so-merry-go-round. Carer’s Allowance had terminated, ceased to exist, joined the choir invisible, and loads of other dead parrot quotes. So DWP had little to report to me. They were done here. Outta sight. They handed it off to SSS, who called the benefit something else. And that was a closed world to the Department for Work and Pensions.
   And anyway, the mugging took place over Universal Credit.
   Same story in a skewed reflection at SSS. They took the handover of the old benefit and couldn’t tell me anything about the department that handled it originally. Now they were handling the new benefit, they were, unsurprisingly, handling the new benefit. And, for that reason, they had no access to Universal Credit records – a different planet. I should contact the DWP.
   There’s an obvious path here, amidst the thorns. Carer’s Allowance affected Universal Credit. Carer Support Payment affected Universal Credit. The money never changed. But deep inside the Universal Credit bunker, they took off the Carer’s Allowance. Then they recalculated the Universal Credit based on the implementation of the Carer Support Payment.
   Somewhere along the way, there was a gap. A fragment. I was told by the SSS that once they handed their figures to the DWP, how the DWP calculated things was up to them. And the DWP told me that they calculated things based on averages and that nothing could be done about the missing £6.81.
   I then found that I may have given the DWP the wrong date of benefit transition. There was a slim sunbeam of hope for me in the eternal depths. But no. The SSS sent me two letters, with different dates on. And I reported the right date to the DWP. I’m guessing the SSS would also have reported the right date to the DWP. When I researched all this, I found the letter with the wrong date on it. I love a complication on top of a diversion next to a distraction. Really makes my day.
   As the dates were right, I was back where I started. What did it all mean?
   It meant I was mugged for £6.81, the figures were correct, and…every carer on these specific benefits was also mugged for a mere fraction of a tiny portion of a decidedly average calculation…adding up to one hell of a lot of money across Scotland when you multiply the number of muggings by the number of carers involved. Or this only affected me, and no one is admitting to the error.
   Except, of course, they admitted to using an average calculation, the number was right, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
   One benefit, affecting a second benefit, only changed its name and moved departments. The money didn’t alter. Seamless. Uncomplicated. And the other department taxed me a £6.81 leaving/joining fee.
   Shits and giggles in Wonderland, Alice. That’s what we signed up for. Shits and giggles in Wonderland. I asked for confirmation that this would be a one-off penalty. It would be. The next payment date crawled into view. I was shocked. They were right. The money went back to normal.
   It’s not the amount I receive. No. It’s the fact that I receive it and this opens opportunities for other services within the system. Luckily, when I applied for Attendance Allowance on my mother’s behalf…I only had to go through that paperwork once.
   I went through it twice. The financial adviser stepped in and asked if I’d maximised the income. So I had to go back in and apply for the higher rate. That’s for people who need more assistance.
   Yes, I’m glad I only had to apply for carer benefit once. Except, of course, I had to do that twice to maximise the income. Once for Carer’s Allowance, now Carer Support Payment, and once for the Carer Component of Universal Credit…or, to get technical, just…Universal Credit.
   There’s a whisper that Attendance Allowance will have a shiny new name, in the end. That won’t affect me. I expect there’ll be a seamless transition to whatever they call it, when the time comes. Can’t wait.