If you are between the ages of 16 and 18 you will be entitled to income based JSA if you are registered for work and training with the Careers Service or Connexions Service and you can show that you meet the other basic criteria for JSA and that:
Jobseeker's Allowance Page Index.
Introduction to Jobseeker's Allowance.
Jobseeker's Allowance and being available for work.
Jobseeker's Allowance and actively seeking work.
Jobseeker's Allowance and being capable of work.
Jobseeker's Allowance and education.
Jobseeker's Allowance rates of pay.
Residence rules for Jobseeker's Allowance.
Income based Jobseeker's Allowance.
What this means
Your partner
If you are married or a member of a civil partnership then your partner should either be:
Orphans
To qualify as an orphan both your parents must be dead. You won't qualify if you do not know whether your parents are alive or dead nor if you simply don't know where your parents are.
You won't qualify if your parents are dead and you are living with a relative or another person. If this is the case then the DWP will consider you to be dependant on that person.
Looked after by a local authority
You will be able to claim JSA if you can show that, immediately before your 16th birthday you were being looked after by a local authority and you are not now living with your parents or any person who is acting in place of your parents. You need to show that you were being looked after under one of the following Acts:
Living in accommodation that is not the parental home.
To meet this criteria you must be living somewhere other than your parents' home or the home of a person acting in the place of your parents. You must be living in other accommodation because:Living away from home and being unable to be supported by your parents.
To meet this criteria, your parents or any person acting in their place must be unable to support you because;
Both your parents have to satisfy one of the above conditions. They do not need to meet the same condition, for example your mother could be disabled and your father could be in custody and you would still qualify.
In order to be classed as chronically sick or disabled you need to show that your parents satisfy the criteria for the Disability Premium or the Higher Pensioner Premium of Income Support or that they are disabled former members of the armed forces and they receive an amount paid to them for the cost of maintaining a vehicle or that they are substantially and permanently disabled.
The DWP defines "substantially and permanently disabled" if they have experienced some loss of physical or mental faculty which results in an impairment of their abilities and that this impairment is "both substantial and permanent". The DWP will accept all people who have registered with their local authority as disabled. Anyone who has applied to be registered but has been turned down by the local authority will not be accepted unless it can be shown that the condition has worsened.
The DWP gives the following as examples of disablement:
The DWP makes the point that this list is not exhaustive.
Of necessity living away from parents.
In order to demonstrate that you are "of necessity" living away from your parents or any person acting in place of them you need to show that:
Decision Makers are advised that it is not always necessary to ask for further evidence (other than your statement) that your are, of necessity, living away from your parents and that additional evidence should only be sought if there is a doubt.
Estrangement
There is no legal definition of "estranged". You will be considered to be estranged from your parents or the person acting in their place if you can show that:You can be the subject of a care order and still be estranged from the local authority if you are not living in the foster home or cummunity home in which you have been placed.
Physical or moral danger.
The DWP instructs its decision makers to decide the degree of danger taking into account all the circumstances. The guidance states that the term "physical or moral danger" should be given a wide interpretation and indicates that the following points should be considered:
Serious risk to health
You must show that the risk is serious and that you must live away from home in order to avoid this risk.
You will not meet this criteria if the risk is not considered to be serious. The DWP provides the following examples of what it would consider as a serious risk to health:
These are only given as examples, there may be other circumstances which would cause a serious risk to your health.
