Child Personal Care (CPC) Allowance

​Request 757199716

Dear FOI Officer,

Under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, I would like to request the following information relating to Child Personal Care (CPC) Allowance administered by Customer and Local Services (Social Security).
Please provide the following, covering the period 1 January 2020 to the most recent available date:
1. The total number of Child Personal Care Allowance applications received.
2. The number of those applications that were approved, refused, or partially approved.
3. The number of CPC cases where backdating of payments was granted, and the average and maximum period of backdating.
4. The number of CPC cases where backdating was requested but refused.
5. The most common reasons recorded for refusing backdating.
6. The number of appeals or reconsiderations received relating to CPC backdating, and how many of these were successful.
7. The number of CPC cases where the Minister for Social Security exercised discretion to allow or deny backdating beyond the standard period.
8. Copies of any policy, guidance, or internal decision-making documents currently used by officers when determining backdating requests or exercising discretion.
9. The number of CPC recipients who are also receiving Income Support.
10. The number of CPC recipients who are not receiving Income Support.
11. The number of CPC recipients who also receive Carer's Allowance.
12. The number of CPC recipients who do not receive Carer's Allowance.
13. Any available statistics or analysis showing the average processing time from application to decision for CPC claims.
14. Any internal reviews, audits, or reports carried out since 2020 about delays, communication issues, or the identification of eligible families who were not informed about CPC.
15. Details of any training or awareness materials provided to staff in Social Security, schools, CAMHS, or other government services regarding how or when to inform families about potential CPC eli.

Response 

1 & 2. The department has provided the following table to answer questions 1 and 2.

Please note that CPC applications can only be approved or disallowed – the category “partially approved" is not applicable. 

3 – 7. Following a review of systems, it has been concluded that the information, as requested, is not held in recorded form. To answer the request, the data would need to be manually reviewed and extracted from individual claim records and then manipulated. Aside from taking more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do that work, the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data in order to provide a response. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

8. CPC claims are backdated to the date on which a person has applied for the benefit. There is a 14-day time limit for completing and returning the form with all supporting evidence. Determining officers may, under exceptional circumstances, use discretion and extend this by a further 14-days. 

The information on start date of CPC claims is publicly available in the Income Support Policy ​Guidelines​ (see Section 8, which covers the Impairment Component) and in the Income Support Determining of Officer Guidelines under the “start date of claim" section, and specifically the reference to backdating claims. Excerpts from the relevant sections have been provided with this request.

9, 10,11 & 12. The department has provided the information requested in the table below. Please note that the values shown are a snapshot of claims open at year-end (apart from 2025). 

The Department would like to clarify the interpretation of question 11, “The number of CPC recipients who also receive Carer's Allowance." The figures presented reflect the number of children with a Child Personal Care (CPC) award where there is an adult in receipt of Home Carer's Allowance (HCA) in respect of their care. As HCA is a separate benefit, a single adult claimant may receive one HCA award while caring for multiple children with CPC awards. Therefore, the number of HCA claims may be lower than the number of CPC recipients shown in the table.

13. The Department's Service Level Agreement for CPC claims is to complete them within 28 days of receiving the impairment form and all required information. For context, the current average processing time from application to completion is 28 days, which aligns with this target.

To explain how claims are progressed once received, the department provided the following detail:

An Impairment form (which is used to assess a CPC claim) can only be assessed if sufficient medical evidence has been provided from relevant professionals.

Where the evidence supplied is not sufficient to make the assessment, the Department will request further information before the assessment can proceed.

Certain cases can be expedited, such as where there is a terminal diagnosis or in other sensitive circumstances.

14. The information requested is not held by the Department for Employment, Social Security and Housing. Therefore, Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

15. The department notes that question 15 appears to be incomplete, and therefore it is unclear what specific information is being sought by the requester. The Department was unable to obtain a clarification however, in absence of this, the Department has interpreted the request as seeking details of any training or awareness materials provided to staff in Employment, Social Security and Housing,  schools, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), and other government services regarding how or when to inform families about potential CPC eligibility. 

The Department has delivered internal and refresher training to the teams listed in the table below: 

Table 1 – Internal training sessions: 

Table 2 - Awareness sessions delivered to external services 

​Table 3 - Awareness events attended by members of public 

The following presentations are used to support these training and awareness activities: 

• Income Support Internal Training (internal presentation) 

• Guide for Determining Officers (staff user guide on Impairment Component) 

• ​Impairment Overview Presentation External (External presentation – used with external agencies) 

These materials are used to guide staff and partner agencies in understanding CPC eligibility and referral processes. 

Articles applied 

Article 3- meaning of information held

Meaning of “information held by a public authority"

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority. 

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

(2) Despite paragraph (1), a scheduled public authority may still supply the information requested on payment to it of a fee determined by the authority in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of this Article.

(3) Regulations may provide that, in such circumstances as the Regulations prescribe, if two or more requests for information are made to a scheduled public authority –

(a) by one person; or

(b) by different persons who appear to the scheduled public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.​