Illness Benefit & Springboard Courses

[bored2012]

Hi All

Ive been on illness benefit for 6 months with severe depression. I have no job, I have 100k neg equity in a house down the country that I cant give away and other loans that I cant pay and as Im skint I have to share the house with my ex (great crack).

Mabs have helped some what and stopped the phones calls etc but as a result I have feck all spare cash a week. Some weeks Im lucky if i have €20.00 to spend.

I have good days and bad days and I know that Im not fit to go back to work and my doctor agrees it will be awhile yet before I can work again. But I feel so useless, I cant work due to my condition. I would love to do a course online but cant afford it and came across the springboard website. Im not eligible as illness benefit aint on it so my question is do I stop collecting my illness benefit for afew weeks as you can be eligible if you have no payments or do I try and change from illness benefit to disability benefit. Sorry for the long winded question.

Its just I cant do anything on illness benefit and there are no jobs out there for me now , I feel that my life is wasting away and spend most of my time in bed as I cant afford to put fuel in the car some days. Atleast if I could do a course it might give me something to look forward to.

 

[gipimann]

Illness benefit and disability benefit are the same scheme (disability benefit is the old name for it). Did you mean Disability Allowance? That is a long-term means-tested scheme, not based on PRSI contributions.

You must be in receipt of one of the eligible payments in order to qualify for a Springboard course, so stopping your Illness Benefit claim won't be sufficient unless you re-sign for jobseekers.

Are you able to work part-time? There is a new scheme called Partial Capacity Benefit which allows you to work part-time and keep some of your illness benefit.