I have put this here as the Audience for Attendance Allowance is over 65 years and this additional information may be more relevant to those on this benefit.
Grandparents who or other family members who care for children for more than 20 hours per week will get credits towards their pension.
Pension credits will also be extended to those with £10,000 in the bank up from £6,000 translating to an additional £4.00 per week,
Basic State Pension is to rise at 2.5% per year regardless of inflation.
Winter Fuel Payments are kept this coming year 2009/10 with an additional £50 for those over 60 year making £250.00 this coming winter with those over 80 years receiving £400.00.
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I am on pension credit and after Social Services asked me to look after my granddaughter I enquired about extra help but I was told it was nothing to do with Pensions
If you are legally the guardian of your grand-daughter and she is under the age of 16 then it seems to me that Social Services ought to be directing you to the various services available i.e.
Adoption, fostering and children in care
Caring for someone
Pension Credit - introduction
All the weblinks are to www.direct.gov.uk. The last link on Pension Credit has tools to help you calculate your credit. However as you are caring for a child this maybe outside of the scope of pensions BUT depending on your legal status concerning your grand-daughter create eligability for child related benefits.
Your social services contact dealing with your grand-daughters case is BEST placed to advise you and if they are not or are not giving you enough support than I suggest you complain.
May I also suggest that you contact the Citizen's Advice Bureau or Age UK
A government scheme that gives households in England £400 off the cost of a new boiler will be launched later.
The boiler scrappage scheme was announced in the pre-Budget report last month.
According to the government it will help households cut their energy bills, reduce CO2 emissions and support thousands of jobs.
Up to 125,000 households in England could benefit from the scheme, which is costing the government £50m.
How do I do it?
To qualify households need to have a working G-rated boiler. It is likely to be G-rated if it is more than 15 years old.
Once you have found out if your boiler qualifies for replacement, the next step is to arrange a quote for a new one from a qualified installer. This could cost anything between £2,000 and £3,000.
Then, you need to provide the Energy Saving Trust (EST) with details of your old boiler and the installer you have chosen fit the new one. The EST will also want confirmation the installer has actually visited your home and provided you with a proper quote for the work.
Assuming all that is in order, a voucher worth £400 will be issued from 18 January. This will be refunded once the work has been done and the EST has received both the invoice for the work and the voucher.
The £400 rebate should take no more than 25 working days of the paperwork reaching the Trust.
Bigger deals
Energy companies are expected to use the scheme to drum up business. British Gas, the biggest installer of boilers in the UK, is planning to match the government's £400 discount.
Other firms are offering similar savings too. The government says the scheme will help to safeguard jobs across the industry which, it says, employs about 130,000 installers.
The government says upgrading a boiler can save a household more than £200 a year. It has also estimated that replacing 125,000 G-rated boilers will save about 140,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.
Catherine Allinson, from Balham, south London, has had her boiler for more than 10 years and hopes to upgrade to a new one with the help of the scheme.
She said: "My current boiler is pretty inefficient, and has not been terribly reliable this winter."
"I hope the new boiler will save me money in the long run, so it is worth the investment now, and with the boiler scrappage scheme, I should be able to get a little bit of money off the full cost of the boiler, so that will help," she added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8440557.stm