A senior nurse at Leeds teaching hospitals trust wrote to the DWP confirming Adam-Smith was caring for her daughter “consistently for the majority of the day, each day and often at night” for the duration of her five weeks in hospital and that medics needed her advice on how to care for and communicate with her daughter.
She called the DWP carer’s allowance team as soon as she realised the payments had stopped: “They said let us know when out of hospital and you start caring for her again.
Adam-Smith said it was “so wrong” that unpaid carers were not entitled to carer’s allowance when their loved ones had been in hospital for 28 days, as they were often vital to communicate with medics.
The mother of a severely disabled young woman was left in financial hardship after her carer’s allowance was wrongly stopped while her daughter was seriously ill in hospital.
Benefits regulations state that personal independence payments and carer’s allowance stop when the cared-for person has been in hospital for 28 days because the state assumes their needs are being met.
