Universal Credit Child Element Calculator

Universal Credit pays a child element for every child or qualifying young person you are responsible for, now that the two-child limit has ended. Most children are worth the standard rate, but the eldest or only child in a household born before 6 April 2017 is on a separate, higher rate that has nothing to do with how many children you have. A disabled child brings an addition on top, at one of two rates, entirely independent of which child element rate applies. That addition also qualifies you for a Cold Weather Payment in England and Wales, whether or not you work.

This calculator adds up what each child brings, tells you whether one of them is on the higher first-child rate, and totals the disabled child addition separately. It does not work out your whole Universal Credit award: housing, health, earnings and savings all belong to the Universal Credit Calculator, and neither the benefit cap nor the childcare costs element is calculated here, though both are linked below.

Only if that child, and no other, was born before 6 April 2017. Regulation 36 pays an eldest or only child £351.88 a month instead of £303.94 if they were born before that date. This rule predates the two-child limit by nine years and was not touched when the limit was repealed: it is a separate distinction about when the eldest child was born, not about how many children the household has. Only one child can ever hold it, whatever your family size.

All of them. The two-child limit ended for assessment periods starting on or after 6 April 2026, and every child or qualifying young person you are responsible for now gets a child element, with no cap and nothing to apply for. Existing claims were updated automatically; a child who was never reported still has to be added. The change itself, including how the money arrived and what to check on your statement, is covered in the two-child limit guide rather than repeated here.

The child normally lives with you. If a child lives with two people who are not a couple, for example after a separation, only one of them can hold the element, and it goes to whoever has main responsibility. Parents can nominate which of them that is; if they cannot agree, DWP decides. A child who is temporarily away from home keeps their place unless the absence runs past six months in Great Britain, or one month if they are absent from Great Britain.

These get different answers, and mixing them up costs money either way. A foster carer gets no child element and no disabled child addition at all for a fostered child, because the child is legally looked after by the council rather than by the carer. A kinship or family-and-friends carer usually does still get the element, including any disabled child addition, as long as the child is not a looked-after child placed with them. Where the child is looked after and placed with a kinship carer, the same exclusion as fostering normally applies.

It starts from the beginning of the assessment period a birth falls in, as long as it is reported by the end of that period; it is not paid from the exact date of birth itself. It stops on the 31 August after a child's 16th birthday, unless they are a qualifying young person in non-advanced education or approved training of more than 12 hours a week, in which case it can run to the 31 August after their 19th birthday. Leaving that education partway through the year ends the element from that assessment period, not from the following 31 August, and a course counted as advanced education never qualifies at all. For a new baby, the Maternity Allowance and Universal Credit Calculator shows the element alongside maternity pay, which Universal Credit counts in two very different ways.

The award keeps being worked out as though the child had not died, including any disabled child addition, for the assessment period the death falls in and the following two assessment periods: a run-on of up to three assessment periods in total. This sits alongside the separate run-on that applies when a partner, or someone you cared for, dies.