22 June 2026
Hello Mike,
My son Jacob is 19, he has a disability and gets PIP (high daily living, low mobility)
I get a child element and a disabled child addition for him in my Universal Credit
He is just coming to the end of the first year of a non-advanced college course that will continue next year.
I have been told by my work-coach that the amounts that I get for Jacob will stop at the end of this academic year, but that he won’t be able to claim for himself while he is still at college.
Is this right?
Jo
Hello Jo,
The end of the UC that you get for Jacob
Right now, Jacob counts as your Qualifying Young Person.
A QYP is a person aged 16-19 who is doing non-advanced education (upto A Level).
It’s because he is a QYP that you qualify for the child element and disabled child addition for him.
But his QYP status ends on the last day of August following his 19th birthday.
So you won’t get any UC from him in the assessment period that includes 1st September onwards.
What can he claim In his own right?
There is a general rule in Universal Credit that you cannot claim if you are receiving education. (Details, including exceptions, here)
However, once Jacob’s QYP status ends he will no longer count as receiving education, even though he is still attending college, so long as he can meet the work related requirements of his UC claim.
Work Related Requirements?
If you have an award of UC and you are not in work, you might have to meet the Work Related Requirements:
- If you are fit-and-well and have no caring responsibilities you will have to job-seek in return for your UC, as well as doing work-focussed-interviews and work-preparation.
- If you submit a sick-note (fit-note) to trigger a work capability assessment, your job-seeking should be suspended, so long as it is reasonable to do so; but you still have to do work-focussed-interviews and work-preparation.
- After a work capability assessment if you are found to have limited capability for work, you definitely don’t have to job-seek, but you still have to do work-focussed-interviews and work-preparation.
- If your work capability assessment finds that you also have limited capability for work related activity, all your work related requirements are removed.
Applying this to Jacob
Even though Jacob will still be at college he will not be excluded by the recieving-education rule, so long as he can meet the work-related requirements attached to his claim.
So, you should get a sick-note from Jacob’s GP confirming his condition and then on 1st September he can claim UC.
He should either submit his sick-note on the first day of his UC claim; or if that’s not possible he should explain his health condition that day and submit the sick-note asap after that.
He should explain that he would be able to meet the work-focussed-interview requirement and the work-preparation-requirement around his college course.
And then, he should be awarded UC.
A potential misunderstanding
Jacob may be told that he can’t claim; and that he needed to have his work capability assessment before he started the course.
But that would be a different matter.
It’s true that if you want to claim while you are receiving education, one of the exceptions is if you had a work capability assessment before the course began.
But that wouldn’t be relevant to Jacob.
Jacob’s claim is based on the fact that because he can meet his work-related-requirements, he doesn’t count as receiving education at all; and so he doesn’t need an exception to that rule.
And here, for the benefit nerds is the law:
Regulation 5 defines a QYP and says that QYP status goes on until the last day of August following your 19th birthday
Regulation 12(4) says that a course doesn’t count as receiving education if it is compatible with your work related requirements