The Scottish Government has launched its consultation on Scottish Carer’s Assistance, the payment that will replace the current Carer’s Allowance when it is taken over by Social Security Scotland. The consultation runs until the 23rd May 2022 and is the first stage in the process of improving the main payment made to unpaid carers in Scotland.

At North Lanarkshire Carers Together, we will be submitting our response to the consultation, and are engaging with unpaid carers directly to make sure we are putting your voices at the heart of that response.

The new Scottish Carer’s Assistance Payment marks one of the biggest proposed set of changes to financial support to unpaid carers in Scotland, and it is important that we share your views with the government.

How to take part

We’re providing a few ways for people to get involved including:

  • Joining us at our Carer Forum online session 12.30pm – 2.30pm on Wednesday 20th May where we’ll hear your thoughts on the government’s proposals. Email forum@carerstogether.org to sign up
  • Answering short polls and surveys available via our social media pages and below
  • Sharing thoughts directly with our consultation lead, Angela Sinclair Millar – you can email Angela at angela@carerstogether.org

Themes of our consultation

The full Scottish Government consultation consists of 48 separate questions. We are acutely aware that most unpaid carers will not have time to fill this out. Therefore, we have pulled out key questions from the consultation to ask you. These include questions on:

  • The proposed Additional Person Payment where extra money will be paid when a carer is caring for more than one person
  • The proposal to allow carers in full-time education to access Carer’s Assistance Payment
  • Adding caring hours together when caring for more than one person so these full hours are taken into account in terms of the 35 hour per week eligibility requirement
  • Paying Carer’s Assistance Payment for 12 weeks after the death of a cared for person rather than the current 8 weeks
  • Changes in the earnings threshold from £128 per week to £158 per week and a ‘run on’ so that carers won’t lose their whole payment if they earn even just £1 over the threshold
  • Any other views you have on wider eligibility criteria and on how the payment could be improved upon for unpaid carers in Scotland

Complete our short surveys

We’ve designed our surveys so you can pick and choose which to respond to based on what is important to you. They each take less than 3 minutes to complete:

Our consultation response will be published online at the end of May and a flash report will also be released.

If you wish to view the full Scottish Government 48 question consultation, you can find it here: https://consult.gov.scot/social-security/scottish-carers-assistance/