Introduction to Social Security
This one day course is ideal for people who are new to working with the benefits and tax credit system or for those who need a comprehensive overview. As you'd expect from a course that covers the entire social security system in a day, it's all breadth and not much depth. The point of the course is to put all of the different parts of the system into context, and to explore the relationships between them.
Course Content
- Differnt types of benefits - 'Flat Rate', Means Tested and One-Off
- If you have an illness or disability thats stops you holding down a full-time job, you may be able to claim benefits from either, or both of the flat rate and means tested groups. Your individual combination depends on your situation. Two parallel systems apply to different groups of claimants (Old - Incapacity Benefit or New - Employment & Support Allowance). We look at which system applies to whom.
- Flat Rate Benefits - We begin by looking at three of the most important of these, Disability Living Allowance, flat rate Employment & Support Allowance & Incapacity Benefit. Once we have used these three examples to see how flat-rate benefits work, we move on to look at the range of other circumstances in which flat-rate benefits can be paid: We explore the Statutory Pay benefits, Carer's Allowance, Retirement Pension and several others.
- Means Tested Benefits for Adults - Income Support, income based Employment & Support Allowance, income based Jobseeker's Allowance, Pension Credit and Working Tax Credit. We look briefly at the rules for each one to see who can claim which.
- Child Tax Credit - We see how CTC fits in with work and other benefits, and we see who is automatically entitled to maximum CTC.
- Housing Benefit & Local Housing Allowance - We cover the costs that HB and LHA can cover and we see how 'tapers' reduce entitlement with increasing income.
- One-Off Payments - We look at the range of payments and discuss the difference between discretionary and regulated grants and loans.
