Befuddled by the benefits trap!

Oh my word! The boy wonder has a part time job! Amazing! He found it himself! He's earning! He's managing to hold it down! I'm proud of him!

But.....

He has little concept of the aggro its caused me as his financial appointee!

He claims Employment and support allowance, he's been deemed not fit for full time work (do you know how hard it is to be assessed like that?), but of course he has to be awkward!!!!!!

So he's allowed to work up to 16 hours per week, not 16 hours per week, up to 16 hours per week. Believe it or not as a quite intelligent person I thought 'up to' would have meant he could do 16 hours but no! He can do 15 hours and 55 minutes at the most. Bloody great!

So now I'm stuck as I have to persuade him to only work up to, not 16 hours and trust him to tell me the truth when he's being decidedly iffy as he wants to earn as much as he can without thought or care that its me in bother if he doesn't. I also have to get him to fill in the PW1 (permitted work 1) form so I've asked his social worker to pick up the crap to hopefully ensure its not something else I can be blamed for as it sounds distinctly dodgy to me without details of his employment to go by.

So he's 19 and a half I'm still here being mum unless I get locked up for fraud. Although huge thanks to the advisor whose helped me sort it all out so I won't. I fell lucky getting an adoptive parent in similar circumstances when I rang panicking , I do love our supportive community.