The ongoing scandal of Carer’s Allowance overpayments has seriously undermined trust between the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and people providing unpaid care. Originally introduced in 1976, this benefit was intended to recognise the important contribution of carers to society and to provide partial income replacement for those unable to work full-time. In 2026, it does not fulfil its intended purpose and needs a fundamental rethink. The meagre weekly payment of £86.45 leaves many living in poverty, while the low and inflexible earnings threshold has led many carers to unknowingly accumulate large debts which they struggle to re-pay. The way that DWP has pursued recovery of these debts from people disproportionately likely to be living in poverty has caused serious harm. Our research finds that for many carers, their experience of claiming welfare benefits is characterised by stress, anxiety, and feeling devalued.
The Carer’s Allowance overpayments scandal exposes serious weaknesses in the way that this benefit is designed and administered, many of which are documented in the Sayce review, as well as multiple House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee inquiries. The government is currently consulting on changes to the ‘cliff edge’ earnings threshold – which is one of the problematic design features of Carer’s Allowance. This consultation is an important opportunity to address one source of harm, but the problems run deeper than the cliff edge alone. Our policy breakfast attendees concluded that there are fundamental questions about whether the design and administration of our social security system genuinely recognises and values the contribution of unpaid carers.
Policy breakfast: How can the DWP re-build trust with carers?
This was the focus of our Policy Breakfast, chaired by Liz Sayce OBE and hosted by the Centre for Care team on 16th June 2026. The event brought together carers, welfare rights advisers, researchers, Parliamentarians, journalists, and policy-makers all united by a shared concern about the unfair treatment of people claiming Carer’s Allowance.
Our policy breakfast agenda included:
- A contribution from a carer, who shared her struggles claiming Carer’s Allowance while caring for her mum – including juggling work and care, and incurring overpayments debt.
- Reflections from a welfare rights adviser, based on his 8 years’ professional experience giving welfare rights advice to carers of people diagnosed with life-limiting illness, who are navigating support from multiple public agencies at once.
- A presentation of the findings from our new research into carers’ and welfare rights advisers’ experiences of navigating the welfare benefits system in England and Wales by Kate Hamblin and Becky Driscoll.
- A roundtable discussion chaired by Liz Sayce OBE, exploring what needs to change so that carers can reliably access their welfare entitlements with confidence and dignity, which generated the following key themes.
The social security system should be underpinned by clear values and principles
In order to genuinely rebuild the relationship between DWP and carers on a solid foundation, the Policy Breakfast attendees agreed that first, DWP should acknowledge the harm caused to carers and then commit to a set of values and principles which guide both its policy-making and day-to-day administration.
Lessons can be learned from Scotland. Following the devolution of most benefits to the Scottish Government, new agency Social Security Scotland developed a Charter which sets out three core values of dignity, fairness and respect, and commits to a human rights based approach to welfare in Scotland.
Carers, disabled people and other groups of claimants should be invited to co-produce these values and principles for England and Wales. Reflecting on the evidence presented, the Policy Breakfast group suggested that these might include:
- Dignity – emphasising our entitlement to fair treatment as citizens.
- Transparency – clear expectations, rules and predictable, consistent decision-making are essential.
- Accountability – mitigating the power imbalance between DWP and claimants, for example so that both parties are held to clear expectations about timeframes, errors, responsibilities, while claimants have access to robust mechanisms for redress.
These values must be embedded in the policy-making, culture and day-to-day administration of the Department
These values should shape how policies are designed, how risks are identified and how performance is judged. Involving people with lived experience of caring and disability, as well as making use of the existing research evidence, is also essential to policy design and changing administration for the better. The involvement of disabled people in the Timms Review is a positive step in this direction which the DWP should continue to build on. However, some attendees noted that trust has been so badly damaged by past experiences that some Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) will no longer engage with the Department. This demonstrates the extent to which public commitment to a new approach is needed.
The disappointingly slow pace with which the DWP has responded to the recommendations of the Sayce Review are cause for concern. Much greater transparency is needed about the progress of the re-assessment exercise which will look at 200,000 cases of overpayments. Given the severe impact on the carers involved, DWP should explain how it will conduct this exercise as rapidly as possible. Recovery of overpayment debt should also be paused while this work is ongoing.
The central message from both the Sayce Review and from Centre for Care research is that DWP’s own systems and processes make claimants vulnerable to preventable harm:
- The complexity of the system makes it challenging for carers to understand what they may be eligible for, how to claim, how benefits interact, how to adhere to complex rules (e.g. the earnings threshold), and how to challenge DWP decisions and errors.
- The combined pressures of time-poverty, money worries, internalised stigma about claiming benefits, and the stress involved in DWP assessments, long waiting times, and appeal processes can affect carers’ abilities to access their entitlements.
- Being able to access welfare rights advice can make the difference – but even highly experienced advisers report that the system is increasingly unpredictable to navigate.
A roadmap for practical reform
Our next steps following the Policy Breakfast will be to produce a roadmap setting out how the DWP could re-build trust, and take a systems-based approach to safeguarding claimants’ wellbeing. Adopting the principles of the social model of disability, we suggest that the DWP begins by asking not ‘who is vulnerable?’ but instead ‘why are they in a vulnerable position?’.
This is an important shift in perspective. Our research highlights that vulnerability should not be seen simply as a characteristic of individual claimants. The systems people have to navigate can themselves create or intensify vulnerability. DWP should therefore take responsibility for identifying and reducing the foreseeable harms that its policies and processes can create.
This roadmap will utilise learning from other sectors which already have a more systemic approach in place. For example, in financial services, the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) Consumer Duty takes an outcomes-based approach informed by consumer experiences of vulnerability where providers have to demonstrate that vulnerable customers are receiving the same level of service. Senior leaders are held accountable for failures to protect vulnerable customers. The lesson for DWP is not that social security claimants are simply ‘consumers’. It is that organisations can and should be held responsible for the outcomes their systems produce, including where those systems create additional risks for people in vulnerable situations.
As well as this administrative change, the design of Carer’s Allowance is in need of fundamental review and reform. The Government’s stated commitment to reforming the earnings threshold is welcome – however, it should not stop here. It is long overdue for a public consultation about the purpose and design of carers’ benefits in the modern world. Again, lessons can be learned from Scotland, where the Scottish Commission on Social Security (SCoSS) scrutinised and reported on the replacement of Carer’s Allowance in Scotland, drawing on the values set out in the Charter and involving carers and other stakeholders in this process.
In her contribution to the Policy Breakfast, the carer who attended described how Carer’s Allowance leaves carers ‘feeling small’. It’s not enough to live on – particularly given the additional costs of being a carer – but at the same time, it places tight restrictions on your ability to undertake paid work which fits around your caring commitments, or to study and improve your earnings potential. It can land you in a worse financial position if you accidentally breach the earnings threshold. This reflects our research, which found that many carers feel ‘insulted’ when they learn how Carer’s Allowance works.
Rebuilding trust requires more than reforming the earnings threshold
The experiences of the carer who contributed to our policy breakfast captures the fundamental problem with Carer’s Allowance. It is a benefit intended to recognise the contribution of unpaid carers, yet its design can leave carers feeling that their contribution is barely valued at all.
This is why the Government’s consultation on the earnings threshold is an important opportunity, but it cannot be the end of the conversation. A higher threshold, or the introduction of a taper, could reduce some of the financial risks faced by carers. A more predictable approach to averaging earnings could also help carers who combine paid work with caring responsibilities. But these changes alone will not address the deeper problems identified by carers and welfare rights advisers, nor will they rebuild trust in a system that many experience as complex, unpredictable and one-sided.
We need a fundamental review of the purpose and design of Carer’s Allowance – as highlighted at our previous Policy Breakfast and in the published Case for Change – informed by the people who rely on it. That review should ask what carers should be able to expect from our social security system, how the system can support people to combine paid work and unpaid care, and how it can properly recognise the value of caring.
Rebuilding trust also requires DWP to take responsibility for the vulnerability created by its own systems. That means embedding dignity, transparency and accountability in the Department’s culture and decision-making, learning from other sectors, and ensuring that carers and disabled people have a meaningful role in shaping reform. If DWP is serious about rebuilding trust, it must move beyond tinkering around the edges. It must listen to carers, acknowledge the harm that has been caused, and commit to building a social security system that treats people with dignity, respects their time and recognises the essential contribution they make.
About the author
Becky joined the Centre for Care in June 2022 as a Research Associate. Currently, she is working with Louise Overton, Maxine Watkins and Kate Hamblin on a research project investigating complexity and inflexibility in the welfare benefits system for unpaid carers. She is also involved in the children, young people and families theme, with projects on kinship carers and children’s residential care.
