Forms, money and the system
Kitchen table · 3 threads
Assessments, benefits, attorney, care fees, and getting a straight answer out of anyone.
Assessments, allowances, means tests, attorney paperwork, care fees, and the long business of finding out which office is responsible for what. Carers write from several countries here, so answers usually cover the mechanism first and then the named route wherever you happen to live. Rates and thresholds change every year, so always check the date on an old reply before you trust it.
- My own operation is finally booked and there is no cover for the fortnight afterwards. How do people pay for that? 5 replies · last by ron-at-home, Aug 30, 2026
- Mum signed attorney forms years ago and nobody ever registered them. Now the bank will not talk to me. Is it too late? 5 replies · last by Lorna B., Jul 8, 2026
- I've cut down to three days a week and nobody ever offered me an assessment of my own. Am I entitled to one? 5 replies · last by dee1972, Jun 22, 2026
How to read anything in this section
Two warnings before you use an old thread. First, every rate, earnings limit and means-test threshold in here was right on the day it was posted and may not be right now. Take the mechanism from the thread and the current number from the official source. Second, the schemes have different names in different countries and are not equivalents: a payment in one system is a tax credit in another and a leave entitlement in a third, and none of them substitutes for the others.
The recurring practical lesson is that almost nothing here is granted automatically. Assessments are usually triggered by asking, backdating is usually limited, and a refusal is very often a decision that can be looked at again. Several people in this section were turned down first time and succeeded on review with the same facts, better documented.
The resources page lists the national carer organisations and regulators for each country, which is where to go for a current figure or a form you can trust.