Vol. 481 No. 1
192 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs the cost of introducing a premium in the carer's allowance of £20 for medium-care demands and £50 for high-care demands to take account of the special needs which some carers may have and the additional burdens which this imposes on full-time carers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15376/97]
The carer's allowance is a social assistance scheme which provides an income maintenance payment to people who are providing elderly or incapacitated pensioners or certain disabled persons with full-time care and attention and whose incomes fall below certain limits. Estimated total expenditure on the scheme this year is put at £36.4 million. At the end of last August there was a total of 9,753 carer's allowances in payment.
The present scheme does not distinguish between medium-care or high-care special needs but is applied to all carers who satisfy the above conditions. If such were the case, separate categories would have to be devised to assess the individual requirements of each applicant.
The cost of introducing an additional payment to all full-time carers of £20 per week, to take account of the extra costs involved in caring, would involve additional expenditure of £10 million while an additional weekly allowance of £50 would entail additional costs of almost £25 million.
