A young carer who had looked after her disabled mother from the age of eight was forced to repay more than £2,000 when she unwittingly breached carer's allowance benefit earnings rules after joining a government youth employment scheme.
Rose Jones, 22, said she was twice wrongly advised by her jobcentre work coach that her wages earned under the Kickstart scheme would not affect her eligibility for carer's allowance. Less than a year after she completed the six-month scheme, under which the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paid her wages, she received a demand from the DWP demanding she pay back £2,145 of overpaid benefits.
“I was shocked when the letter arrived – it came on my 20th birthday – and I really didn’t know what to do. I thought it was a mistake because my work coach had told me it was fine. It was a really scary letter to receive,” Jones said.
The case is the latest in a stream of carer's allowance injustices highlighted by a year-long Guardian investigation and a relatively rare case involving a young carer – most unpaid carers are much older adults. At least 144,000 UK carers are repaying more than £250m in earnings-related carer's allowance overpayments caused by what MPs said were “human mistakes” on the part of carers and repeated DWP administrative and policy failures.
Jones began caring for her mother, who has physical and mental disabilities, at the age of eight, helping around the house and with shopping, looking out for her safety, and accompanying her to hospital appointments. When she turned 16 she started to claim carer's allowance and it was only when she took up a place in 2021 on the DWP's Kickstart scheme aimed at young people at risk of long term unemployment that it became an issue.
Under Kickstart, the DWP paid employers £1,500 a month towards wages and training costs, with participants guaranteed to be paid the equivalent of 25 hours a week at the national minimum wage. In Jones's case, this is £656 a month, which worked out for the purposes of the DWP's earnings rule calculation at £151 a week. Because she had unwittingly breached the weekly earnings limit of £128, carer's allowance rules meant she forfeited her £67.60 carer's allowance. Jones said she was frustrated by different branches of the DWP which did not seem to be clear on the rules and had not routinely shared information about her case.
