Carousel

Written by our team of over 20 experts, our Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook is the must-have guide to the social security system. This handbook provides all the information you need to help you maximise income for your clients and to support with completing benefits checks, making claims and what to do when things go wrong.

With living costs and unemployment rising, budgets squeezed and problem debt on the increase, no adviser should be without this essential guide to the practice and process of giving money advice in England and Wales.

Who’s this book for?
It is essential for debt advisers, welfare rights advisers, lawyers, local authority and housing association staff, social workers and union official.

What does it do?
The handbook provides the most comprehensive information needed by advisers on the key stages of money advice, including interviewing clients, establishing liability, prioritising debts, preparing a financial statement, negotiating with creditors and dealing with bailiffs. Fully indexed and cross-referenced to law, regulations and official guidance, and to court and tribunal decisions Includes tactical guidance and examples

What's new?
Fully updated to cover all recent changes to legislation, caselaw and court procedure and practice Emphasis is placed on taking due care of vulnerable clients and making sure that any payment arrangements agreed are appropriate. There is a focus on sustainable credit arrangements that do not affect a client’s abilities to pay essential living expenses and priority debts.

The yearly Children’s Handbook Scotland is a comprehensive guide to the benefits and tax credits available to children living away from their parents, including those in kinship or foster care, children in local authority care, and children in residential school, residential care, or hospital. It is fully referenced to legislation and caselaw and includes easy-to-use checklists and examples.

It covers entitlement when children live away from home, how local government payments affect carers' benefits and tax credits, and how to appeal decisions. This latest edition is an essential handbook for anybody dealing with families and children in Scotland, as it is fully referenced to legislation and caselaw and includes easy-to-use checklists and examples.

The annual Benefits for Students in Scotland Handbook is the most comprehensive guide to benefits and tax credits for students in Scotland.

Fully updated for the academic year, our comprehensive guide to benefits and tax credits for students in Scotland is an invaluable resource for anyone who advises students. It is fully cross-referenced to the law and includes easy-to-use checklists and examples.

Fully updated for 2023/24. the handbook is a comprehensive guide to benefits and services for disabled people. It provides in-depth guidance on the benefits system, explains how social care operates around the UK and includes information about specialist services and resources.

The handbook provides in-depth information and invaluable guidance on the benefits system and social care services, it covers:

Your right to benefits

For anyone with an illness, injury or disability
For carers, children and young people
For people in education or work, looking for work, not in work or in retirement
For people injured at work or serving in the Armed Forces
Eligibility requirements and how to make a claim
Challenging decisions; how to appeal

Your right to care and support

The eligibility criteria for people needing care and support
Assessments, budgets and ways of paying for care
Challenging eligibility and funding decisions
Local authority duties
Support for carers

The Benefits for Migrants Handbook gives practical, comprehensive guidance on social security entitlement for anyone who has come to the UK or is thinking about going abroad. Fully updated, it remains the essential guide for claimants needing to demonstrate their right to reside or check how immigration status affects access to benefits, including families with different immigration statuses; refugees and people from Ukraine and Afghanistan needing to check when benefits can be paid; asylum seekers needing details of support; British citizens returning from abroad; and other migrants who need to navigate the complexity of the immigration and benefit rules.

This edition explains how having a pending application for, or grant of, leave under the European Union Settlement Scheme affects benefit entitlements. It also details who is covered by the EU co-ordination rules and when this can enable benefits to be paid sooner or paid abroad for longer, or mean the UK must be the competent state.

The Handbook includes step-by-step information, tactics to help you enforce your rights and covers practical problems such as delays and providing evidence. It is fully indexed and cross-referenced to UK and European legislation and caselaw, and explains when European law still applies.

At a time when fuel poverty is affecting more and more households, CPAG’s Fuel Rights Handbook provides advisers with the information they need to help their clients cope with rising fuel bills, debt and problems with their fuel supply.

Covering all aspects of the rights of gas and electricity consumers in England, Wales and Scotland, including liability, dealing with arrears and preventing disconnection, complaints, and the latest energy efficient schemes. With an emphasis on the legal protection of vulnerable consumers, and on practical advice pursuing complaints and compensation, this handbook provides essential information on the reduction and prevention of fuel poverty.

This Handbook is an essential resource for consumer advisers, lawyers, social workers, advice agencies and anyone who is worried about their own fuel supply.

Despite struggling to make ends meet, many families do not claim all the financial support to which they are entitled.

This new edition of Financial Help for Families: what you need to know is for you if you work with families and want to help maximise their income or deal with a benefit problem. It covers all the main social security benefits, as well as other important financial support for children, such as child maintenance and help with childcare and school costs. The book would be particularly helpful to advisers working with survivors of domestic violence.

You don’t have to be a benefits expert – the book is clear and understandable for everyone. It contains plenty of examples to help explain the benefit rules, tactics on what to do if the amount of benefit has been reduced or if payments are delayed and a useful glossary of terms.

Now in its 19th edition, this Big Book offers 500 pages of user-friendly practical information, tips, tools, tactics, health assessment forms (page by page guidance and tips), effective support letters, caselaw and example appeal submissions.

An essential resource to help make your own claims or support those for others, especially if living with mental health issues.

​New/Updated for 2021/22:​

​Benefit changes: revised and updated overview and charts covering recent pandemic and other changes and a new chapter on the HMRC Emergency Coronavirus Support Schemes.

​Personal Independence Payment: the latest on anti-mental health discrimination, change in assessments processes, case law, and a new approach starting in Scotland later in 2021

​Sickness benefits: Making sense of the sickness benefits scene - what is going and what stays; issues when swapping from income-related ESA to UC, how the ESA/UC Work Capability Assessment works with page by page guidance through an example form, how to effectively support and challenge claims and ESA changes in doing that.

​Universal Credit: now split into two. Part 1: a practical guide to how UC works, moving over to it, claiming, the UC sums, practical tips and pitfalls to avoid in surviving UC. Part 2: separates out more complex and problem areas into their own chapter alongside reports and calls for change.