Ms Margaret Lowndes:

I am a carer. I gave up my job three years ago and my husband works. I have two boys who are on the spectrum but one is worth a full carer and the other is only worth half a carer. How can it be justified to do that to families that have two or three children? They should all be equal and the money should be equal across the board. It is not right that you can pick and choose a child. It is those small things; whether you are over it or under it you are hit either way. On top of that we have a few families in our support group that will hopefully eventually get back to work or would like to get back to work in the future. They would like to upskill but there is no course for them. A lot of them would like to go on and do speech and language therapy or occupational therapy but there are no pathways and when you find a pathway it puts them over the 18.5 hours. You look at the way it works and we are hit left right and centre, whether it is money or whether we are over or under the limits, on top of wanting to be able to go back to work eventually.