Whats the saving limit for people on benefits?

Efour said:
It's his carers that deserve the holiday. Not him per se.
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wouldn't be suprised if they turned out to be family members......

Richie said:
You are using this individual example of a person who gets £11k of direct funding to care for himself due to disabilities and saving £50k as the general example of what happens to every disabled person in similar circumstances. Arknor took exception to ANYONE getting £11k of funding for care costs and suggested that they should instead be put in a care home aka Warehousing of disabled people
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11k per month is ridiculous for one person!!!!! he should be in a care home, I bet you can get a luxury care home for 5k a month.....

no wonder thius country is broke when we can afford to give people 11k a month
 
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arknor said:
wouldn't be suprised if they turned out to be family members......


11k per month is ridiculous for one person!!!!! he should be in a care home, I bet you can get a luxury care home for 5k a month.....

no wonder thius country is broke when we can afford to give people 11k a month
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The cost of caring for someone with a severe and progressive disability is obviously high. However, home care allows people to live independently with significant benefits to their quality of life and ability to remain involved in the local community. Claims that disability benefits are a financial burden on the economy fail to recognise that such benefits underpin social cohesion and economic activity. Ethically, the way in which a society treats its vulnerable reflects a value of the society, in that ensuring the dignity and independence of the vulnerable is an obligation, not just a sign of society's compassion.
 
Richie said:
Hmm, you seem to have misunderstood me.

You are using this individual example of a person who gets £11k of direct funding to care for himself due to disabilities and saving £50k as the general example of what happens to every disabled person in similar circumstances. Arknor took exception to ANYONE getting £11k of funding for care costs and suggested that they should instead be put in a care home aka Warehousing of disabled people
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No I'm not, I'm commenting on this example, I've not made any generalisations about all disabled people. Bar the surprise that the level of empathy especially for this forum seem pretty much fine... I would have expected much, much worse and in much greater volume.

The only other generalisations I've made is what he has done is not OK for anyone to do, it's fraud, and it's not his money to do with what he likes. He shouldn't get a pass because he's Ill, ill people can do bad things too, and it's not a harmless victimless situation other, lesser claims will have been rejected that year because the budget had already been used up or budgets for other social care departments cut the next.

I'd say the same if it was a business lying about how they use grants or councillors fiddling their expenses, As much as they might pretend pots of cash are ring-fenced they aren't.
 
Ayahuasca said:
The cost of caring for someone with a severe and progressive disability is obviously high. However, home care allows people to live independently with significant benefits to their quality of life and ability to remain involved in the local community. Claims that disability benefits are a financial burden on the economy fail to recognise that such benefits underpin social cohesion and economic activity. Ethically, the way in which a society treats its vulnerable reflects a value of the society, in that ensuring the dignity and independence of the vulnerable is an obligation, not just a sign of society's compassion.
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there must be loads of care homes around the country that are able to meet his needs.

and the fact he wants to take his own careers rather than have 2 supplied for him, suggests its probably family members caring for him...
 
arknor said:
there must be loads of care homes around the country that are able to meet his needs.

and the fact he wants to take his own careers rather than have 2 supplied for him, suggests its probably family members caring for him...
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Family carers would be getting 'carers allowance' which is £76.75 a week.
 
Uther said:
Family carers would be getting 'carers allowance' which is £76.75 a week.
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hes getting direct payments though so he can basically employ whomever he wants?

seems kinda weird, councils didn't even trust people to pay their own rent
 
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arknor said:
there must be loads of care homes around the country that are able to meet his needs.

and the fact he wants to take his own careers rather than have 2 supplied for him, suggests its probably family members caring for him...
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Nope there isn't it's exactly why direct payment is a thing, it's a band-aid to farm out social services to the private sector without the council having to employ or contract with anyone themselves.
 
I was gonna say earlier his carers could be family but didn't want to stoke the fires :p

If they are then the cheek of the guy. That's playing silly games.....
 
Efour said:
I was gonna say earlier his carers could be family but didn't want to stoke the fires :p

If they are then the cheek of the guy. That's playing silly games.....
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I'm pretty certain the rules clearly state you can't employ family or friends with the money, it needs to be a registered legit company........... who just so happen to have some MPs as investors.... probably ;)
 
Sythe79 said:
Which is fine, like I said before if he wants a holiday to Florida give it him, what I don't understand is why he has 50k just sitting in a bank account. In fact, he had more than enough to pay for the holiday 5 times over.

This is the key part

"He planned to use the savings for a six-day trip to Florida with a specialist travel company - his first holiday in 24 years - at a cost of £3,500."

"Nathan said he was happy to pay for his own flights and accommodation, but wanted support with funding the flights and accommodation of his two personal assistants"

"I have never wanted my holiday to be paid for," he said. "But I do object to having to pay for the people that will be working to support me."

This is the key part, it would probably never have even been flagged until he started asking for extra money above the 11k he gets a month and the 50k he had sitting in his bank account.

It might sound harsh when you talk about the individual but when general social care and council budgets would love just to be on their knees it does sound like he's trying it on, It's NOT his money it's all of our money and while it's sat in his account some other people that could have used it are missing out.
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The 50k is for the cost of his carers and thier travel/acomodation/equipment/insurane/pay i believe. The council wants to hire american carers not his long term ones.

If they're providing intimate care it's kind of understandable he wants the people he knows and who have helped him rather than some new person for the week.

He doesn't keep the 11k it is spent on his carers costs.

Full time care can cost up to £1.5k a week x2 cause he's definitely above the safe lifting limit of one person and 11k is very quickly gone.
 
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Sythe79 said:
Which is fine, like I said before if he wants a holiday to Florida give it him, what I don't understand is why he has 50k just sitting in a bank account. In fact, he had more than enough to pay for the holiday 5 times over.
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Because the rest of the money is for his care costs and carers. That taken back he has his 3.5k to go but now he has no money to pay the carers the council is saying it's cheaper to hire an American firm to do the job, instead of his two long term carers.

Medical care costs are very high, especially when they're going to have to rent equipment and things rather than ship his own.
 
danoliver1 said:
If your on benefits and you can "afford" to save up then your getting to many benefits in the first place.
I know plenty of people who work full time and still can't afford to save. Maybe they should just give up work?
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One of the reasons people on some benefits, especially if they're disabled try to save some money is fairly simple.
The government, usually through incompetence, sometimes though maliciousness, or even just plain idiocy can remove your benefit at pretty much any time and it can take 12+ months to get it back for things like mobility, so trying to have enough to at least cover the extra costs incurred simply by being disabled is a good idea, if you can.

I know a couple of people on DLA etc who are very very careful with their money because they've had times in the past where the DWP has proven to be operated by a bunch of illiterate idiots who just rubber stamp the "not eligible" box. My mother ended up at a tribunal where an ex high court judge and the other two on the panel were the first people to have actually read even the DWP's own Doctors report (let alone the letters from her own GP and a very senior consultant) - this was 18 months after she lost her DLA, they apologised and told her she'd got it before she even reached the table), for much of that time she couldn't afford to do things like replace her electric scooter, and was without a car, she put a good chunk of the backpay aside in case of future idiocy and stopped getting motobility cars (they go back within 4 weeks of the DWP decision, even if you appeal it and DWP are unusually fast it take 8+ weeks at a minimum for them to "look again").
 
arknor said:
wouldn't be suprised if they turned out to be family members......


11k per month is ridiculous for one person!!!!! he should be in a care home, I bet you can get a luxury care home for 5k a month.....

no wonder thius country is broke when we can afford to give people 11k a month
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"You bet".

You'll probably lose that bet, the local old folks home near me costs something like 2-3k a month and they are definitely not set up for extensive long term medical care that requires full time on call assistance, and despite the best efforts of the staff it was not exactly a nice place to spend any time and the staffing levels were nowhere near enough to look after people who need a lot of assistance and are mentally with it enough to want to be able to do things rather than sitting quietly waiting to die, or "living" in a single small room and maybe if ambulatory or able to be wheeled around quickly/easily spending time in one of the "common" rooms.

Proper medical care on a 1 to 1 basis is incredibly expensive, especially if the person receiving it actually wants to get out/do things.

Also it's lovely to see the idea that if you're disabled you should be basically locked away out of sight in a facility because "you cost too much".
 
People look at everything in material value. Yes on the face of it 11k a month is a real high amount of money but if I had the choice of 11k a month and needed to be helped to do basic things and had a life expectancy of 60 and being wheelchair bound by your 40's I would take the 9-5 on a crappy wage for the rest of my life every day of the week.

It is relatively easy to save up 50k. If you are frugal which I am sure he is given his condition.

I honestly hope no one in here ends up with a crippling life shortening illness or children with the same.

No one should be forced into a care home because of something they were born with.

There are plenty of people who get 11k a month for doing sweet FA. Whilst the minions below them do all the work. They are the ones people need to go after not the disabled.
 
adam cool dude said:
There are plenty of people who get 11k a month for doing sweet FA. Whilst the minions below them do all the work. They are the ones people need to go after not the disabled.
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The point is it's not 11k like dole money, that 11k has been costed and approved to cover the things he needs, if it wasn't direct payment he would just get the same exact services without a penny going into his bank in theory.

people talk about empathy but seem to have a very loose moral compasses, in the room next door to the one that approved his non-existent cinema trips there's a room denying DV survivors £500 for a bed and some sheets for their grotty bedsit because the hardship fund is empty till next year or cutting charities 5k funding to help feed the homeless.
 
I have a progressive condition and was pretty normal for the first 30 odd years and had no idea what lay ahead. If I had met myself from the future (eg: current me) there's literally no way I could have comprehended what a disabled life is truly like. I would have heard the words, understood their meaning but I simply could not fathom the reality of it.

To require 24 hour care, to literally not be able to do anything for yourself, to have to sit in your own **** till someone can sort it out for you is something I'm desperately fighting against but it's coming for me and it's terrifying.

Again, you read the words but you can only understand them on your level. Some of the comments in here have been absolutely disgusting.

When you're basically a prisoner in your own home and body you are constantly evaluating whether it's even a life worth living. You have to really dig deep to find a reason to carry on in the face of constant, unending adversity. You never get a break from that, it's always there.

My analogy is it's like you've run a marathon, you were a bit slower than everyone else and there's a guy at the finish line and he simply says, 'you've got to go around again'. There's no arguing, so off you go. This time you make it round and everyone's gone home and it's dark. There's the guy 'you've got to go around again'. It starts raining, everything hurts and you stopped jogging a long time ago but there's your friend at the finish line, 'you've got to go around again'. You're on your hands and knees, you collapse for a bit but you get up again as the wind blows icy rain in your face. The man looks at you and simply says 'you've got to go around again'.

I'd love a holiday.

(btw, yes I'm fine but I wanted to try and express just a fraction of what so many here are clearly oblivious to)
 
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