Adventures in Benefits

As of this week, my Statutory Maternity Pay entitlement has finished, and although I am still employed, I'm not receiving income. As such, I am entitled to claim Income Support.

To claim Income Support, you call a free number and answer questions such as

has your child ever been on  the Local Authority register of blind persons?

and

are you needed in court?

...for half an hour. Then they print out your answers  and send them to you, second class with a list of documentation they need for proof of what you've told them. Then you can either post them your passport and payslips and hope they remember to return them, or you wander on down to the Job Centre and have them make a certified copy for you. You sign the forms, fill in a bit about equal opportunities, and post it back. And then you wait for them to process the paperwork and pay you £71 a week.

Meanwhile, you have to tell Tax Credits that you are no longer receiving income. This is different to no longer being employed. If I had quit my job, my Working Tax Credits would run on at the same amount for another four weeks. But I have not quit my job, I'm just not receiving any income. So I do not get the 4 extra weeks of Working Tax Credit. I do not understand the logic behind this.

The next thing you need to sort out is the Housing/Council Tax Benefit. This is organised by the local council, rather than a government agency. So earlier this week I schlepped on down to the local council office to submit my last payslip, and the letter from my work stating the date my pay finished.

A little background on the Housing Benefit saga is required here: Statutory Maternity Pay is paid weekly on a Saturday, and because some months have more Saturdays than others, for the last few months my payslips have been different each time. So each month I take my payslip to the council and they decide how much Housing Benefit I should have received for the last month. If I should have had more than I did, they put a lump sum into my rent account, and the money I paid last month could have been spent on nappies or shopping. If I should have had less than I did, they send me a coded message disguised as a statement of account, saying they've overpaid X amount, and will recoup this by deducting X amount from my new weekly entitlement. This usually comes through mid-month, by which point the payments they are making are most probably already incorrect. The consequence of this is that I never know how much rent I need to pay from my wages each month. If I gamble, and my Housing Benefit is cut and doesn't make up the shortfall in what I've paid, I get snotty letters threatening eviction. If I pay too much, when the letter comes stating my new entitlement I kick myself.

So here I am now, having submitted my last payslip. Technically, from this week onwards I am entitled to full Housing Benefit and am not liable to pay any more rent. So I need to know what my Housing Benefit entitlement was for last month, to make sure I pay the exact right amount to cover the difference between the rent and the benefit. I sincerely doubt the local council do refunds, if I pay too much. But I've only just submitted my payslip so it will be a couple of weeks before they sort out the figures, and then I need to get hold of the housing officer, who is never available anywhere, and get her to email me a screen print of my account, and figure it all out.

Meanwhile, I can't get full Housing Benefit, even though they have a piece of paper in front of them from my employer telling them when my pay finished. Oh, no. They need a letter from Income Support confirming I am indeed receiving the benefit. And I won't get that until I've sent back the forms and waited for them to process all of that. Cue snotty letters threatening me and my daughter with eviction.

Incidentally, I'd just like to point out here that while Income Support is £71 a week, Jobseekers is £91 and I believe Incapacity Benefit is about the same. If anyone is able to explain to me why JSA should be more than Income Support, when people on JSA are supposed to be looking for a job and getting off benefit, and people on Income Support are entitled to be at home, not looking for a job, raising their child until it is 5 - please do!

Read this post to see how long it took for my Income Support to actually be paid.

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The Work Debate

I'm still trying to decide whether to go back to work, and to make all the mini decisions that go with the larger one.

Last week I finally bit the bullet and made some calls to some government departments. After a morning listening to Vivaldi, I'm fairly sure that all benefits are paid from the phone charges. If they're not, they should be. We'd all be rich.

If I go back to work:

Artist's impression of me at work

• My pay will stop in January, but they will hold my job open until May.
• I will need to find childcare for S. If I use a childminder, this is around £100 a week. Despite several phone calls and messages, I've not been able to get a response from the nursery closest to me as to what their costs would be
• Regarding payment for childcare, there are two options. My employers are part of the childcare vouchers scheme, which is a salary sacrifice set-up. I can opt to have a maximum of £243 per month taken from my pay (before tax and NI) to be paid to my childcare provider. Or I can have my Working Tax Credits help with childcare costs. They will pay "up to" 70% of the cost of my childcare. But if I do the childcare vouchers thing, I can't get Tax Credits for my childcare. Unless my childcare is more than £243 per month, in which case I can apply for Tax Credits to pay "up to" 70% of the difference. It's almost as if they're trying to trick you into being out of pocket.
• My employers are obliged to provide me with a place I can express breast milk for S while at work, but only until she is a year old - so April. After that I suppose everyone thinks she should be fully weaned, and to hell with whether she actually is or not.
• As far as I can tell, I will be earning just enough that I won't qualify for Housing Benefit, or Council Tax Benefit. 
• I would qualify for free prescriptions, eye tests, dentist, etc.
• From a pre-tax pay of around £200 a week I will have to pay £85 rent, £25 council tax, childcare, gas, electricity, food, water... I'm no mathlete, but I can't see how that adds up. Little bit worried. It's difficult to get any sort of prediction as to what my Tax Credits would be.

This is what staying home entails

If I don't go back to work:

• Income Support is £71 a week.
• I would get Child Tax Credits, but (obviously) not Working Tax Credits.
• I would qualify for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
• I think I would get some sort of vouchers for fruit and milk.
• I can stay on Income Support until S is 5, if I so wish. The thought of five years of daytime telly is a bit horrid though.

One thing I need to take into consideration is that I have signed up to do this OU course, and want to do a good job with it. I also want to finish as soon as possible, which means taking as many credits at a time as I can - which means having the time to study them!

I spoke to the Income Support people a few times last week, and discovered that between February and May, while I am technically employed but receiving no pay, I can claim benefits as if I were not employed. 

For the moment my plan is to do just that. From February to May I will claim Income Support, and see if I can live reasonably on benefits and not go mental. By that point I will have been off work more than a year so I may well find I really need to go back to work. My bank balance may agree with me.

So what I've basically decided to do is to postpone making a decision for a few more months. Good work, Vicky.

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To Work or Not To Work?

I’ve been thinking about going back to work.

I’m entitled to stay off work until May, but they will stop paying me at the end of Janaury – so technically, I need to make my decision and either go back in February, or resign.

I like my job. The people are nice, it’s a friendly company, and being yelled at on the phone occasionally is more than made up for by the large amount of sweets and cakes usually available. I’m fairly sure they would allow me to cut my hours, change what days I work, whatever, in order to facilitate my return to work. It’s a big company with a lot of mothers already working there and my boss is something of a legend (I can say that because he doesn’t do reading or the internet, so he’ll never know I said it). Whether I like the job is not the issue, though.

I have so many friends who have had babies and had to go back to work before they felt ready. I’m sure lots of them would have liked to quit their job and stay home to look after their child for longer, but they couldn’t afford to do that. In fact, I think that’s most of my friends.

This is where being a single mother actually has advantages. If I stay off work, I will receive Housing Benefit and Income Support, and probably various other things that I’ve not really looked into but maybe should have by now. If I go back to work, I am led to believe that my Working Tax Credits will increase enough to more or less pay for child care, but I will be earning less money and may or may not qualify for Housing Benefit. Either way, it’s doubtful that I would be well-off. In fact, I’m likely to be decidedly skint in both scenarios. This gives me a choice most mothers don’t have: be skint at home, or be skint at work.

For most of my childhood, my mum didn’t have a job. She was there if I ever had to come home sick from school, and we spent our school holidays at home with her. As far as I was aware that was the norm. Now that I am a mother, I feel very strongly that if I decide I don’t want to go back to work until S is a little older, I should be able to make that choice. I have paid my taxes up to this point for that very reason. I believe every mother should have that choice, and the task of looking after a child or children should be seen as a job. After all, we are producing the next generation, and I’m sure everyone would rather they got the best possible start in life so as to not be a burden on the state later on. Not that I’m saying children who go to nursery or other forms of childcare will turn out to be delinquents; just that if a mother would rather look after the child herself, why shouldn’t she be able to?

I am well aware that if I opt to stay home with S for the next couple of years and live on benefits, I will be seen as one of those mothers: the leech on the state, living in a council flat and bleeding the government for all she can get. I am told I look younger than my years too (when I’m wearing make up to cover the bags under my eyes, obviously), so that doesn’t help with the prejudice. I remember last year S’s father pointing out to me how many of his neighbours had children who were around four years apart in age; inference being that they had gone and got pregnant again specifically to avoid having to go out to work. And actually, yes, a lot of the children in that area did have brothers and sisters exactly four years older and/or younger than them. I was aghast. I had no idea that people could be so cynical and calculating with something as important as creating another life. Do people really do that? Incidentally, I’m told that these days the government don’t make you come off benefits and get a job until the child is seven, so that should please a few of these women if they do in fact exist.

People do play the system, of course they do. And ultimately, it’s the mothers who are forced to go back to work earlier than they would like who pay the price for that abuse. I know there isn’t exactly spare money in the economy to fling at these things, but wouldn’t it be nice if the attitude was, Ok, go and have a baby, look after it, take your time, have enough money to live on comfortably, go back to work when you’re ready. Obviously that sort of system would have to be monitored to ensure people weren’t having a child and then leaving it with a relative while they got drunk all day and night on their benefits. I would have no problem with someone coming round to ensure I’m putting a lot of effort into bringing my daughter up well, if it meant I could have enough money to live more comfortably. As I said before, treat it like a job – because ultimately that’s what you’re doing, and you do it for longer than 8 hours a day.