Benefit Cap

Having had to fill in quite u number of forms relating to various benefits while my husband has been ill I am at a loss to know how some people manage to cope with them. I know I have a high IQ and I had a decent education, but I have found some of them completely impenetrable and if I have telephoned for clarification I have frequentlyhad different advisors contradicting each other. The whole thing is a minefield.

It is like when they introduced Pension Credit. Minimum Income Guarantee people understood. I could give clients a quick top of the head estimate of how much they money they would gain by applying for it - and usually they did. Pension Credit, even though I understood it, removed by ability to give a quick ball park figure without needing a lot more income details than people might be prepared immediately give me and with no idea what the gain was, or them understanding how it worked, the name itself is opaque, I am convinced applications for this benefit fell

The government then ran a completely misleading advertising campaign on television suggesting any pensioner would qualify and we had lots of irate calls from people who went through all the process of revealing all their income and savings to the Benfits Agency only to discover that even those on quite moderate incomes were over the limit and didn't qualify for it.

Of course, the very people who will suffer the most are probably the ones who are least able to understand/challenge the rules - the confused elderly, the people with learning difficulties, and those with mental illness.
The educated and articulate have always managed to get the best for themselves from the system, whether in health, education, or social care.
If CAB advisors are having problems, what chance have claimants got - I fear there will be suicides, breakdown, and more homelessness. Well done, coalition.
Now I expect we will get the government's supporters telling us how bad things were under Labour - which will be little comfort to the people at the bottom of the pecking order.

I think I got slightly confused (understandably) - it's Universal Credit that they are piloting in Ashton. I'm sure I won't be the only one to get a little (?)confused. I don't envy the CAB advisers just up the road from us in Ashton. Which reminds me, I have to be on the way in half an hour.
See you later.

anna it's not just the benefit caps info - it's everywhere, I have a young Australian colleague who was in tears today trying to understand the 5 tier system and various restrictions and combinations or rules for the visa that she is on, she's an intelligent graduate, she read the website more than once, others tried to help, eventually she phoned and when she eventually got to speak to a human being they read from the same website she had been to, which is written in impenetrable gobbledegook. When XXX interrupted the woman and said 'I've already read the website' the woman replied 'Well you must leave when your visa expires' and put the phone down and that's when the tears came.