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A young carer who had looked after her disabled mother since she was eight said she was “amazed” and “overwhelmed” after Guardian readers paid off her £2,000 fine for a mistaken breach of widely condemned benefits rules.
Rose Jones, 22, was ordered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to repay £2,145 after joining a government youth employment scheme that meant she overstepped “draconian” carer’s allowance earnings regulations.
Jones said she was twice wrongly advised by her jobcentre work coach that her wages earned under the Kickstart scheme would not affect her eligibility for carer’s allowance.
However, less than a year after she completed the six-month scheme, under which the DWP paid her wages, she received a demand from the same government department that she pay back £2,145 of overpaid benefits.
Emily Holzhausen, the director of policy at Carers UK, said it was “devastating” to see a young person with a “challenging start in life be badly let down by the DWP”.
The Guardian highlighted Jones’s case as part of its award-winning investigation into the DWP’s prosecution of unpaid carers, which has left hundreds of thousands of people paying back sums as high as £20,000 for official failures that MPs have condemned.
Within days of Jones’s story being published, Guardian readers had donated more than £3,000 to an online crowdfunding campaign.
Jones, who cared for her mother from the age of eight until she was 20, said: “I’m both overwhelmed by how much support it’s had and really amazed that people feel that I was treated badly by the DWP because for so long I did feel like I was on my own in this situation.
“People have given so many kind comments. I feel very supported. It was like a weight on my chest for so long. I’ve been dealing with this for almost three years now.”
Jones said she would use the money to pay off her debt and the remainder would be donated to Southampton Young Carers.
Jones said she was frustrated that she had been forced to pay the cost of official failure after different branches of the DWP – the jobcentre, the employment section and the carer’s allowance unit – appeared unclear on the rules.
She added: “It was particularly stressful when I first got the letter from the DWP. I was really worried that I would have to pay it all off and I wouldn’t be able to pay for my rent. I was also worried that my mum would get in trouble because she was the one I was caring for.”
