I am asking the UK Government to change the way Carers Allowance is paid by: 

1. Increasing the amount paid significantly to provide better quality of life to people who have given up their own life in order to care for someone else.
2. No longer deducting it as taxable income from low income benefits.

Being a carer is more than a full time job yet we are paid pennies in comparison to national living wage. Friends & Family carers save the government millions if not billions of pounds a year by preventing the need for professional carers and we are paid £66.15 a week for doing this. 

Carers allowance eligibility rules state you must be caring for someone at least 35 hours a week to claim carers allowance and be earning less than £123 a week. For most carers the hours go way beyond that with lots caring round the clock, 24/7, 365 days a year and we are still treated as caring for 35 hours and able to earn £123, constantly told we can get a part time job to earn extra when how is this possible if we are caring round the clock? When are we expected to work to earn extra income if we are caring for someone all day every day. Being a full time carer is tiring and can have a massive effect on a person's mental and physical health yet we are told if we want an acceptable amount of money to live on we must also get a job on top of our caring responsibilities. This simply is not fair and not possible for many carers. 

People on a low income do receive an extra ‘top up’ payment on Income Support and Universal Credit when claiming Carers Allowance but because Carers Allowance is taxable it is deducted from the amount we can claim from these low income benefits, as well as being deducted from tax credits. If carers aren’t paid a wage like a working person the money we do get should not be taxed as it is with a working person. A carers income is low enough without taxing or deducting the extra they do get for giving up their lives to care for someone else.

My personal caring story and the reason for this petition 

I became a carer when I was 15, my brother was 5 and our mother passed away so we lived with our gran who was too old to give my brother the full care he needed as he has had special needs since birth. At 16 I was advised to claim Carers Allowance as I was his main carer. When I made the decision to be his full time carer I gave up my own life to do so. I gave up the possibility of going to college, getting a job and having a normal life but if I didn’t do it there was no one else able to. Skip 10 years down the line our gran passed away a few years ago and I’m still his full time carer, now I’m his only carer. he has a Chromosome abnormality so it’s not something he can recover from and will most likely need a carer for a lot more years to come. We don’t know what the future holds for him but what I do know is that because I became a carer straight out of school, if my caring role ever stops I will be going into the world of work with no work experience, no qualifications and no money. When I look to the future all I see is money worries because I am already living on so little, life is getting more and more expensive and I am expected to live on pennies all because I did the right thing by caring for my brother. How can anyone see this as fair? Caring for another human being is one of the most stressful jobs a person can do, the stress should not be made worse by us worrying how we are going pay the bills or put food on the table because it’s not possible for us to get a job. 

I as well as many other carers suffer massively with mental health issues due to giving up our own lives to care for someone else, lots of carers also suffer physical health issues due to their caring role. We suffer in many ways by caring for someone else, most of us can’t go out and socialise due to either not having time or not being able to afford to, our standard of living is very poor through no fault of our own yet the UK government say they recognise how important our role is. Paying us £66.15 a week leaving us struggling to pay bills when we have no option of getting a job to make our financial situation better is not recognising how important our role is. 

If we underwent training and done caring as a job we would be entitled to a wage, at the end of the day we would get to go home and live our own lives, being a friend or family carer does not give this option, we didn’t have training, we don’t get to clock off at the end of the day but our job is every bit as important as a paid carer.

I’m not asking that carers are paid national living wage as although I believe this is the way it should be, I know this will never happen. I am asking that there is a huge reconsideration of what carers are paid and it is risen significantly to reflect the job we do and that Carers Allowance is no longer classed as taxable income so families on a low income get the extra help they need. 

Our job is hard enough without the added stress of not being able to afford basic things in life. It’s simply not fair and something needs to be done about it as these vulnerable people need carers and no one should have to live in such a poor standard of life for caring for someone who needs extra help.