Tax Credits & Benefits for Full-Time Workers
Course Outline
The benefits system usually counts work for 16 or more hours per week as full time, so the course covers single people, and couples where at least one partner works for more than this limit. This includes people who are on sick leave and maternity leave, who continue to count as workers.
We consider all of the important issues in the transition between unemployment or illness and full time work.
This one day session will help you to identify all of the things that your service users should be claiming to make sure that their weekly income is at its highest possible level. An essential course for anyone who works with service users who are in full time work, or whose job it is to help get people to back into employment.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course participants will:
• Understand the different types of benefits and Tax Credits and the relationships between them.
• Have a basic understanding of who can claim Disability Living Allowance
• Understand the rules of entitlement of Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit, and be able to identify the particular combination of benefits and Tax Credits that each service user can claim to provide or improve their weekly spending money.
• Understand the role of tax credits in helping claimants meet their childcare costs
• Understand how the benefit and Tax Credit systems respond to changes in circumstances such as a drop in income during a period of maternity leave; or an increase in income in starting work.
• Understand the relationship between Tax Credits and benefits and Housing and Council Tax Benefit.
This course supports the following Health & Social Care, Level 3, Units: HSC31, HSC33, HSC330, HSC345, HSC3111