Tackling common benefit problems
A training course for family lawyers
Thursday 21st June 2007. 10.00 am – 4.30 pm. Lloyds Room, Suffolk Enterprise Centre, Felaw Maltings, Felaw Street, Ipswich, Suffolk,IP2 8SJ
Many family law clients rely on welfare benefits for their income and problems with the benefits and tax credits systems affect family law work.
The benefits system is notoriously complicated and things are often made worse by poor administration. While family law practitioners may not want or need to become specialists in social security law, an understanding of how the benefits system works and what can be done about common problems, will add value to professional practice. Such understanding also helps practitioners to know when to involve a specialist.
This course will focus on some key areas where family and social security law interact, including:
· The structure of the benefits and tax credits systems
· Claiming, providing evidence and tackling delays
· How maintenance affects benefits and tax credits
· Benefit-efficient approaches to income maximisation
· Tax credit overpayments – preventing and tackling
· Shared responsibility for children and its effect on benefits
· Lone parents and Income Support claims – the child maintenance duty
· Income Support and mortgages
· Moving from welfare to work
Course participants will be issued with a copy of the Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook, published by Child Poverty Action Group (worth £35). This is the standard practitioner textbook on social security law.
Tutor: Neil Bateman is a well-known expert in social security law who has run his own successful consultancy for over three years. He has considerable experience of training lawyers and other advisers as well as acting as an expert witness and second tier adviser. His written work on welfare rights law and practice has been extensively published and a wide range of organisations seek his expertise. Neil lives in Ipswich. More details at www.neilbateman.co.uk