h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I haven't ever really had very much to do with the benefits system in this country, apart from signing on for about three weeks after I finished uni and before finding something to do next.

All those ads about catching benefit cheats, and the headlines in the Daily Hate and other papers of their ilk seem to imply that people are managing to cheat the system on a regular basis.

But now my family has cause to interact with the system and I am left wondering how people manage to cheat it at all because as far as I can tell, they don't want to give you anything even when you are entitled to it.

I'm cross on behalf of my parents. My dad's ill health finally forced him to leave his job last year and he is now on incapacity benefit, worth about 75 quid a week. This means that they are essentially living on my mums low wage for her part time office job (where she is now bringing home less money thanks to Gordon Brown's disgusting theft from the very poorest to supplement the richest -I may never vote labour again).

I am sure, given their level of income, they ought to be able to get help of some sort. I thought you could get tax credits if you were working for example. The entitledto website thinks they should be getting their council tax paid and several other benefits that would really help them. Apparently though, if you don't have kids at home or are not a pensioner (they are 58 and 61), you only get tax credits if you earn a tiny, tiny amount.

This seems to apply to pretty much every thing else too. The worst thing, though, is that they do actually qualify for tax credits based on the amount they have coming in now but because dad worked some of the last tax year the benefits system thinks they earn much more than they really do. So when they phoned to ask what to do they were advised to basically struggle for the next 12 months then apply in 2009, when the system will see they were in poverty for 2008 and let them have the tax credits going forward. I can't see how that can be right!

How do people manage to cheat a system that works this way?

My advice to anyone new to the benefits system is to seek advice from the CAB to start with. If your father has had to stop work then apart from incapacity I'd suggest claiming disability as well. It's a nightmare of a procedure but it's not an earnings related benefit, it's down to the nature of the disability and degree of disability. It seems to be the norm that a claimant has to go through to the appeals stage but again, despite the time it takes, it is backdated to date of claim. The earlier you claim the better. If he's getting the full incapacity benefit then it's unlikely he'll qualify for income support so sadly won't qualify for housing benefits such as council tax. If he gets disability then he will.
I ended up with my medical team, social services and a friend who's a solicitor to do battle for me in the end but it was worth it. I lost probably 1000's, in benefit that I didn't claim simply because I didn't know I was entitled to claim.(plus a certain amount of stubborn pride, having to ask ) One example was I lost £43.00 carers allowance when I looked after my former terminally ill landlord/lady for over 2 years. It wrecked my health at same time and I was already ill with heart disease.
The criteria is changing again later this year so it's not likely to get any easier, definitely get independant advice and help.

My parents applied for council tax benefit last year, and it seemed to open more doors. Try asking them to apply for that first.

For tax credits, it is based on the previous year's earnings and you do have to fight to get what you are entitled to - when I left working in London then got made redundant virtually straight away from my new job they kept trying to base my earnings on the previous year, when I was on a London wage!

So get the council tax people first (which can take ages, but is at least based on your last three months or so) then try again, and don't let them tell your parents to struggle for the rest of the year! Keep on at them to give them something, even if you end up estimating the 2008 'earnings' and give that to them.

I don't think tax credits check up on people's earnings, they go by what you tell them - I was going to list what ways I think you could get away with it, but thought I might get my message removed! Leave it as saying some things you could get away with leaving off the form, and some you could 'inflate' what you do pay out.

Isn't 61 a pensioner these days?

No, he is a bloke. He doesn't get to be a pensioner until he is 65. Mum will get to be a pensioner when she is 60. I won't be one until I am 67 and my husband will be 68 before he is one.

This is all exacerbated by the fact that he paid into a pension at his job and the trustees of the scheme have to decide whether they will allow him to retire due to ill health. He has had about six medicals where the doctors all agree he should retire then these are presented to the trustees by a reviewing doctor who says he thinks dad might be able to do the odd small thing in the office. Dad and his doctors disagree and then gets sent for another medical. And around we go again. The trustees only meet twice a year, so six months slips by with him struggling before they meet again.

Eventually this will be sorted out and he will at least be lifted out of poverty but in the mean time it seems awful that, as ST describes, you have to fight and battle and argue and appeal and beg to get what you should actually be entitled to. This is preventing my parents from even trying. The stress and humiliation (as they see it) of having to beg for handouts means they are really quite unwilling to put themselves through it.

It is so frustrating that an intelligent man is unable to simply apply for what should be his without help from experts who know how to work the system

Well, I have to say, if they don't apply, they won't know whether there is stress or humiliation or not.

Yes, it can be a bit stressful, mainly due to needing to phone call centres and in my case, the local council being so rubbish and taking so long to do anything they expected me to keep trotting up with bank statements because they needed the latest one for their records (in the end I started refusing because they actually had about six months worth in the end and I complained about having to keep sharing my personal details with them becuase they were so slow!).

I've never found it humiliating, or considered it 'handouts', and I haven't worked probably half of the time your dad has.

In all the years I've been claiming one benefit or another (13 - since J was born) that was the only year that I had any trouble or problems claiming, because of the erractic working hours I was putting in (was working part time to no pattern as a casual for about three months).

One additional thing - if your dad does apply for and get DLA, if your mum is earning less than £90 a week she could get Carers Allowance.

I persuaded them to phone the tax credits helpline after a *long* lecture about how this wasn't a handout and was what they had paid all that tax for, and after he got off the phone to them (with them telling him to struggle for a year then come back next year) dad was so wound up I was worried about his heart.

The helplines seem designed to dissuade people from even attempting to claim by giving a flat 'No' up front. Once he has been told no my dad won't start begging. I wonder if I could get the council tax benefit form and the disability living allowance form for him (they should be online right?) and do as much of the filling in as possible beofre getting him to finish it off. He has got a blue badge after all - at least somebody thinks he is disabled.

If he already has a blue badge then definitely get a claim in motion for disability allowance. You don't get a blue badge if you're not disabled believe me. That's why they're like gold-dust (and get nicked!!). Also by having a blue badge then he must also be registered with social services as it's that dept that issues them. See if he can get a social worker or social care benefits advisor. They even do home visits, I had one and it was her intervention that got me the extra care portion to my disability allowance.
If he gets a visit then thats the time to hide nothing, tell all and let the advisor decide what needs to be on any claim form. It's confidential, a home visit is better as people tend to be more comfortable talking than in an austere office enviroment.

J gets mobility from DLA and *doesn't* get a blue badge, so that is a good starting point, but the blue badges don't come from the same people, they are local authority issued, so it's not a guarantee.

You've just reminded me that when I rang tax credits about taking a small school job, they did say I would not be entitled to anything as I would not be working 16 hours every week of the year. Then when I rang the job centre, they said that school jobs were exempt from the 16 hour rule because otherwise no one would work in a school!

So take ST's advice and perhaps find someone to help him through it.

Re the forms - they are no online, but you can ring up and get them delivered, at least.

I understand what you are going through, my dad has been entitled to council tax help for years, but refused to claim. He only did it last year because my mum is now 65 and has had two eye operations and one knee operation in the last three years. Clearly she can't keep working to top up his income.

Huge s all round. I think they should definitely get onto the CAB; I've used them in the past and they have been absolutely fantastic

sorry, nothing to add because I have no idea about the UK system. The CAB sound like a good starting point though.

My sister used to work in a Jobcentre and she left because she couldn't take it any more. Most people who work for the DWP do care, but because of cutbacks, job uncertainty, policies constantly changing etc it's easy to see how people can become so disheartened in their job. I know that's not really a good excuse for not doing their job and I've had a few gripes with them myself in the past, but in a way I do have some sympathy for the 'bad guys' too