‘Shared care’ situations and meeting the caring requirement
There may be situations where carers are sharing caring responsibilities for a cared for person, for example where parents who have separated each provide care for their child at different times. This may mean that the two parents care for the child on alternate weeks when the child stays with them. Depending on when and how the care is provided this may mean that either both parents are eligible, or neither are.
For example: to be eligible for Carer Support Payment as part of a Carer Support award, the carers would need to be providing at least 35 hours or more of care each week for the child. The award week for Carer Support runs from Sunday to Saturday. It may be that each parent is providing 35 hours each week as a result of when they are providing care, and caring responsibilities they have even when the child is not there.
They may have communications (e.g. phone calls) with their child or their child’s other carer, communication with their child’s school or doctors, cleaning/laundry, shopping, preparing their home for the child to stay etc. which amount to 35+ hours of care every week, even while their child is physically at their other carer’s house.
Where situations like this occur, client advisers should contact the client to explain the situations in which we would consider them eligible/where we would not and then to ask them whether they fulfil the criteria of providing 35+ hours of care on every award week.
If it was established that both carers did meet the criteria, it would remain the case that only one could be eligible for Carer Support Payment as part of a Carer Support award. If neither carer would meet the criteria due to how caring hours are arranged, they may want to adjust these so that at least one of them may be eligible for support. This would apply in the same way to Carer Additional Person Payment but for the carer to meet the 20+ hour caring requirement.
Example of ‘shared care’ and situations where the caring requirement would be met:
Tracy and Martin both provide care for their daughter Lily. Though they are separated and do not live in the same home, they reside in the same town and Lily lives with her mother Tracy from Sunday-Wednesday, and midway through the week, Tracy drops off Lily at her father Martin’s home.
Martin provides regular and substantial care for his daughter from the Wednesday evening until Saturday evening each week, including helping Lily to get washed and dressed, dropping her off and picking her up from school and preparing her meals and medication.
Therefore, each parent provides care for over 35 hours a week and meet the caring hours requirement for Carer Support Payment and both would be eligible. Only one carer could be eligible for the Carer Support Payment component. If both applied for the Carer Support Payment component, a ‘rival carers’ process would be needed to decide who should receive support.
Example of ‘shared care’ and situations where the caring hours requirement would not be met:
Azra and Kamir both provide shared care for their daughter Ayla. Azra and Kamir are separated and live in separate homes. Azra confirms that she and Kamir care for Ayla every other week for more than 35 hours on the weeks they are caring. However, neither of them provides 35 hours of care every week.
This means neither of them are eligible for the Carer Support Payment component. For one of them to be awarded the Carer Support Payment component they would need to adjust their caring arrangements so that one of them was providing 35 hours or more of care each week for Ayla.