As the DWP processes carer’s allowance claims, a major crisis looms over the department. Hundreds of people have bravely stepped forward with their stories of the trauma they’ve endured. Davina Ware, Vivienne Groom, and the Shahar family, to name just a few, are faced with such prosecution. They were supposedly overclaiming, miscalculating, and doing their best to feed their families in a time of great adversity.
Davina Ware, a 68-year-old woman from North London, finds herself in the middle of this ongoing legal battle. The DWP is taking Sarah to court, accusing her of unlawfully claiming close to £17,000 in carer’s allowance. In addition to tending to her dying mother, Maud, she tried to juggle a minimum wage job at a supermarket. Ware did her utmost to juggle her duties. She was told that she owed back almost £4,000 due to an under-calculation of her income.
Vivienne Groom had to endure these same hardships, as the full-time carer for her husband Mike, who has advanced Parkinson’s disease. She was being prosecuted for claiming too much carer’s allowance. She still remembers how afraid she was when she stood in front of a judge last year. Groom described her experience in court as overwhelming, stating, “I was absolutely petrified. I was in such a mess. I wouldn’t have coped.”
Like the Shahar family, they had a long road ahead filled with trauma. Oksana Shahar’s income combined from her zero-hours Sports Direct contract and as a part time school meals assistant just tipped them over the earnings threshold. Their failure led to fines of more than £10,000 for the couple, who are bringing up their autistic son Daniel, 15. As Guy Shahar, Oksana’s husband, expressed frustration with the system, he stated, “I was hoping to see something much more decisive. It’s an anxiety that’s always with us, a cloud cast over everything we do.”
The DWP’s broader approach to benefit entitlement is under fire. This follows the publication of a ground-breaking independent review headed by Liz Sayce, the former chief executive of Disability Rights UK. Yet the review found that the vast majority of these alleged overclaims were not even cases of intentional rule-breaking. Rather, they stemmed from good faith efforts undermined by ambiguous regulations and administrative breakdowns. Since 2019, dozens of home carers have faced trial in similar cases. As a group, they were collectively ordered to repay over £350 million, affecting hundreds of thousands.
Until recently, DWP officials investigated less than a third of these overpayment alerts. This lack of oversight contributed to allowing tens of thousands of people to rack up large debts without their awareness. The consequences of the Sayce review could have wide-reaching effects on future criminal prosecutions and tribunal hearings relating to these cases.
Because of Davina Ware’s circumstances, she is now saddled with debt until 2032 when she will be 75 years old. In a truly heart-wrenching twist, she ended up escaping incarceration altogether. Now she has been told she needs to pay back the entire £16,000 legacy her mother left her when she died aged 91. Ware shared her experience with DWP’s Distant Witness Project. She recalled after sharing her anger, “They just didn’t care to listen.”
Cambiaso Fenz reflected on the significance of the review’s findings, and what it might mean for the industry moving forward. “It’s the start of a new day, a milestone and hopefully we will get to the end of it one day,” she said. She further expressed that she would support any amendments that would streamline the request process and avoid future burdens on carers.
Ware, Groom and the Shahars draw from heartfelt, personal experiences to share their advice. Their stories exemplify a much larger problem that harms millions of people like them across the country. Now the DWP is under greater pressure than ever to respond to these concerns and set out clearer guidance on limits of carer’s allowance claims.