DEBT HELP FOR CARERS

[Undercover Elsa]

Re: DEBT HELP FOR CARERS

Hi Caspar,
Thanks for your pm, and can I just say how much I empathise with you and your wife's situation, and I think it's marvelous that you focus on helping others. Hopefully this also has a therapeutic effect for you too.
In response to your query..I'm sure you are well aware that the first port of call for emergency respite care is your social worker, although there are time limits and often fees involved.

However there is a wider picture, and as I mentioned by PM it is well worth investigating whether any Charities specifically for your former occupation or illness provide facilities or grants for breaks.
I've put together a few for you to take a look at:

Rethink.org is an excellent source of info for holdays, short breaks and funding.

Vitalise Centre Breaks "provide accessible respite care and short breaks in a friendly and relaxed holiday environment. Each break is full board and offers a wide range of activities and excursions. 24-hour nursing care on-call and personal support is included in the price of your break." For the disabled and their carers. Here's a link to available accommodation, bookable online.

Crossroads.org provides support for carers, whereby a trained carer support worker comes into the home to take over the caring responsibilities

This is a bit of a wild card, but another route to which it struck me that you or your wife might like to think about, as I deduce you are a people person who normally likes to keep busy and help others, is volunteer breaks. It would depend how able you felt, and what your interests are, but take for example something like the Embercombe Volunteer Project, a charity which takes on volunteers, providing food and accomodation in return for help with various projects, from managing the woodland estate to basic housekeeping duties.

Continuing in this vein,Do-it.org provide plenty of info on volunteering, including residential placements.

I'll leave it at that for now, by no means exhaustive but hopefully some food for thought, I'll add to the links as we go along.

Hope that helps a little, Caspar

kind regards,

Shepherdess x

[caspar]

Re: DEBT HELP FOR CARERS

You re a gem!

[mrsinvisible]

Re: DEBT HELP FOR CARERS

Thanks, C for the info regarding pension credits. Unfortunately, joint income is assessed for this benefit, so we dont qualify, whereas for carers allowance pre retirement age it was only my income which was used in the calculation. I havebeen banging my head against this wall for so long now that I have a permanent groove in it. (not wrinkles, honest!)

[Spent2much]

This is an old thread but I'm going to post on it - I have just received my carers allowance and got back pay from the second week in April very nice was over £1000 - not sure there is anything else that can help us with our debt as they are statute barred next June .

There are two debts we have still which couldn't be included in the UE route - they are a charge on the house for £5500 and another account of £600 roughly - would love to have both written off but I guess that's a dream lol - I'm paying a £1 a month on the small debt to robbers way and paying £5 a month on the large debt which is with drysdenfairfax .

Well we need to clear these two debts as we want to put the house for sale in a few years time and try to buy another cash or get a small mortgage - we are both 53 and 54 now so probably a mortgage is out of the question - regardless need these debts to go asap .

Have to say going back to carers allowance is that it was the easiest benefit I've ever claimed - compared to pip which caused me more anxiety that ever .

[Susie]

Well done, I think if it were me I would put the money somewhere safe and keep paying until the other debts are all safely SB in case clearing the small one triggers all sorts of bells and whistles on the credit report that wakes up the people with the ones headed to SB, then look at making an offer to see if the smaller one could be got rid of and then if you can manage without the allowance some months keep putting that to whats left until you can pay it off. With a charge on the house they have little incentive to take an offer (others will know better than me on this though).