The scheme provides support to spouses, civil partners and long-term partners of an England Infected Blood Support Scheme (EIBSS) beneficiary who has died after joining the scheme. There is also support available for estates and family members.
If the person who has died was not a member of EIBSS or a previous UK scheme, you can apply on their behalf to receive Hepatitis C and / or HIV payments. Find out more information on applying to EIBSS.
Spouses, civil partners and long-term partners
Spouses, civil partners and long-term partners of deceased EIBSS beneficiaries could apply for:
- a bereavement payment
- discretionary one-off payment towards talking therapy
- discretionary one-off payment towards a funeral grant
- discretionary one-off payment towards employment training
- financial and benefits advice
- income top up and child payments
If you qualify for any of these payments, you'll automatically be paid a winter fuel payment in December every year.
Estates and family members
Estates and family members of deceased EIBSS beneficiaries could apply for:
- a bereavement payment
- discretionary one-off payment towards talking therapy
- discretionary one-off payment towards a funeral grant
- child payments (if you're the primary carer of a beneficiary's child)
Bereavement lump sum payment
If a beneficiary died on or after 1 November 2017, eligible spouses, civil partners, long-term partners and estates of a deceased beneficiary could get a one-off bereavement payment of £10,000. You must apply for the bereavement lump sum payment within 6 months of their death. The bereavement lump sum payment shall only be considered in respect of deaths occurring on or after 1 November 2017.
Check if you're eligible
Partners are eligible if they were:
- married to, or in a civil partnership or long-term (at least one year) co-habiting relationship with an infected beneficiary at the time of their death
- registered with EIBSS
If your partner was registered with a previous UK scheme and you did not claim a bereavement lump sum payment, contact us.
You will not qualify for payment if you were divorced, your civil partnership had been dissolved, or you were separated at the time.
Estates may be able to claim a bereavement payment if there is no eligible partner to receive this payment.
What happens next
We'll aim to provide a decision on all applications within 30 working days.
If your application is unsuccessful
If you wish to appeal the decision, you should email or write to us within 3 months from the date on the letter. We may consider appeals received after 3 months in extenuating circumstances.
Discretionary one-off payments
Funeral Grant
To claim a funeral grant the deceased beneficiary would need to be registered with EIBSS.
A discretionary payment of up to £4,500 is available for the person arranging the funeral, when an infected beneficiary has passed away.
To request this discretionary payment, complete the funeral grant discretionary one-off payment application form (PDF: 152KB).
Talking therapy
A discretionary one-off payment of up to £900 per year is available towards talking therapy costs.
To apply for the talking therapy discretionary one-off payment, the applicant must be one of the following:
- an infected beneficiary registered with EIBSS
- a bereaved beneficiary registered with EIBSS
- family members of an infected beneficiary registered with EIBSS or previous schemes
To apply for talking therapy you need to download and complete a talking therapy discretionary payment application form (PDF: 167KB).
If you are a family member of an infected beneficiary and have not received a payment from us previously, you will need to complete a contact preferences and personal details form (PDF: 125KB).
Bereaved partner payments
In the event of a death of a registered beneficiary, EIBSS will pay the surviving partner the equivalent regular payment for one year at 100%, and subsequent years will be paid at a rate of 75% of the beneficiary payment.
Ongoing entitlement to payments will be based upon the following timescales:
- Apply within 6 months of the bereavement - payment is backdated to the date of death or date of the last payment (whichever is the most recent).
- Apply after 6 months of the bereavement - payment is backdated to the receipt date of the application.
Bereaved partners of an infected beneficiary who were a member of a previous support scheme can apply.
Who can apply
To be eligible to apply for a Bereaved partner payment, the applicant must be a co-habiting spouse, civil partner or long-term partner of an infected beneficiary at the time of their death.
How to apply
To make a claim you need to download and complete an application form for bereavement lump sum and bereaved partner payments (PDF: 172KB).
We can post an application form to you. To request this, contact us.
How it is assessed
To assess your claim, you need to provide the following information:
- Confirmation that you are the spouse, civil partner or long-term partner of the EIBSS beneficiary at the time of their death.
- Provide proof of ID.
- Evidence that you were co-habiting at the time of death unless it is stated on the death certificate. You can provide evidence such as, a joint utility bill, a joint council tax bill, a joint bank statement, a joint lease or mortgage document.
If you can’t provide documentary evidence to prove you were co-habiting and it is not stated on the death certificate, please complete the Referee Form - Appendix 1 at the back of the application form.
You will need to confirm your circumstances and explain why you are unable to provide documentary evidence in Section A, and arrange for someone who can act as a referee for you to complete and sign a declaration in Section B.
We will normally deal with your application within 30 working days of receiving your form. If we need more information, we will write to you to ask for it.
Child payments
These means-tested payments are to help with the costs of bringing up children of an infected beneficiary.
Dependants are children of an infected beneficiary up to the age of 18 years, or up to 21 if in full-time education.
These payments are available to the primary care provider of the child or children.
Infected beneficiaries may qualify for a child supplement by completing a child payments application form, and be assessed as having a household income under £37,900.
Bereaved beneficiaries would need to qualify under the threshold of £28,401.
If you're the primary care provider of a child or children of an infected beneficiary but not a beneficiary yourself, you may still be entitled to apply for support for the child or children for who you're caring for.
Who can apply
To be eligible to apply for a payment for children, the applicant needs to be registered with EIBSS. Everyone registered with EIBSS holds a unique reference number and will be in one of the following groups:
- Someone historically infected with HIV or hepatitis C from NHS blood or blood products.
- A bereaved spouse, civil or long-term partner who lived with an infected beneficiary.
- Primary care providers of an infected beneficiary’s biological child or children.
Income top-up and Child Payment backdating payments
Due to a recent change in calculating household incomes to exclude disability-related elements, EIBSS are reviewing previous applications for financial years 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21 to establish if any disability-related elements have been included in these incomes.
This may result in a recalculation of previously awarded payments and an additional payment.
What happens next
This backdating process requires a re-assessment of any previous applications for disability-related payments, which may have been included in the following:
- Council Tax Reduction (CTR).
- Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
- Incapacity Benefit.
- Income Support.
- Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA).
- Local Housing Allowance and Housing Benefit.
- Universal Credit (UC).
Information to be reviewed
EIBSS are reviewing information submitted previously for financial years 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 to enable any disability benefits or elements to be identified and recalculated. The information under review will be:
- a statement from the person or company that pays the money
- a court order
- payslips
- a full bank statement showing the amount and how often it’s paid
- annual Council Tax statement for the previous year
- benefit award statement (showing breakdown of benefit in case any elements are disability-related)
- Housing Benefit award statement (showing breakdown of Housing Benefit award in case any elements are disability-related)
If we require any further information, we’ll notify you once your application has been reviewed.
If you do have your records for financial years 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21
To establish what your income is made up of, we require a copy of your:
- benefit award statement (showing a breakdown for any disability-related element)
- Housing Benefit award statement (showing a breakdown for any disability-related element) if you claim this benefit
If you have received any income which includes a disability-related element, and have the information available, you can send it to us by Freepost at:
FREEPOST EIBSS (valid within the UK only)
Or you can use our postal address:
EIBSS
NHSBSA
Bridge House
152 Pilgrim Street
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 6SN
You can also email it to us at nhsbsa.eibss@nhs.net
If you do not have the records for financial years 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21
The Income top-up and Child Payments application process is evidence based. Please contact Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to request your full breakdown and award statement, and / or your local authority housing office for your Council Tax statement for the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 years. Unfortunately, we are not able to request these on your behalf.
Backdating information
EIBSS can accurately backdate any recalculation from 1 April 2018 when the Income top-up scheme review was completed, and all previous Alliance House scheme members were moved onto the same consistent criteria.
Interest rates
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have confirmed interest will be applied to any backdated payment amount at the rate of 8%.
Winter fuel payments
If you are an infected or bereaved beneficiary and have applied for any of the above payments, you will automatically receive a winter fuel payment every December.
If you do not apply for any of the payments above, contact us as you may still be eligible for the winter fuel payment.
Financial and benefits advice
There is a range of financial and benefits advice available for partners of a deceased beneficiary.
