This week I have mostly been gathering evidence for my PIP reconsideration. Personal Independence Payment is a welfare benefit designed to help people with the extra costs of being disabled - allegedly. I was assessed at home recently and found to be completely ineligible. I did not score at all against the criteria, although they do accept I have disabling conditions. Cunning wording that. It means I can't challenge the decision against the Equality Act.
I get the chance to have this assessment reconsidered by a DWP manager but I need to explain why I think it was incorrect and submit some evidence to support my assertions. This is hard when they plainly do not believe me to start with. On the day of the assessment I had little pain, was moving freely and was more relaxed than I expected to be. What do they want me to do? Act ill? They just did not take my own account of my own condition as the truth.
I am asking my friend (who helps me with budgeting and financials), my daughter and my counsellor, all to write with hard evidence contrary to the findings of the assessment. It all feels like some elaborate game I have to play just to get my entitlement. The assessments are clearly not fit for purpose - tests only test what tests test. They didn't see me in Tesco's this week, leaning on my trolley and having to get the assistant to unload it and pack my shopping for me. They didn't see me crawling up the stairs to the loo or struggling to get my socks off at bedtime. The assessor, if she had come on one of these days would have found shopping and washing piled up in the kitchen, washing up not done and me incoherent with fatigue and pain.
All of this is massively stressful. I am still recovering from the months of fear of losing my home, which made me suicidal, and then the sudden relief of negotiating terms to stay. It does mean though, that my PIP application is not critical to me keeping up with the rent. I see clear water ahead for the first time in a while.
Saturday, 13 February 2016
Saturday, 6 February 2016
A reprieve.
I saw my doctor yesterday. I had two pressing things to talk about and two non-urgent things, but since she's informed me in the past that she can only focus on one thing, I asked her to choose. I suppose it was a bit passive aggressive of me and, to be fair, she did cover the two pressing things: my suicidal ideation and my newly-developed asthma. She also dropped a bit of a bombshell, she's leaving at the end of the month. Being the sensitive practitioner she is, she well understood the ramifications especially since we have worked hard to establish a good relationship.
Anyhoo, I promised I wouldn't kill myself until I'd spoken to her first. I am trying to hold onto my home and have made an offer to my landlords of a rent I can afford in the hope they will prefer to keep the place occupied, rather than refurbish and let again. They were thinking about it and I have yet to hear. I have an extra bedroom you see. If I sub-let it the council will take the income from that off my housing benefit and the DWP will also take the same amount from my ESA, so I'd actually be twice as badly off. They would allow a joint tenancy and that, I suppose is the next step. I would have to convince my landlords it is worth the hassle for them, and I would also have to find someone I could trust to live with.
Better by far though than what I could afford on my own around here. I've lived in places like that before and I can't go back. Which is where the suicide comes in. Logically I know it is better to survive in a dump than be dead. There's part of me though that won't do it again because I would become terminally depressed with no chance of recovery this time. I've lived with the dealers on the landing, the alcoholics with their fights and chaos, the crazies running amok with a carving knife. The dog shit on the stairs and the constant thump, thump of a sound system somewhere.
I have worked hard to get out of all of that. I've worked hard to be a part of my little community, to keep myself afloat, and to give back. To get out of the lay-by of life and be part of things.
Just heard! My landlords have come back with an offer I can just manage. Just. I was going to delete the above but I'm keeping it there as a reminder never to give up hope.
Anyhoo, I promised I wouldn't kill myself until I'd spoken to her first. I am trying to hold onto my home and have made an offer to my landlords of a rent I can afford in the hope they will prefer to keep the place occupied, rather than refurbish and let again. They were thinking about it and I have yet to hear. I have an extra bedroom you see. If I sub-let it the council will take the income from that off my housing benefit and the DWP will also take the same amount from my ESA, so I'd actually be twice as badly off. They would allow a joint tenancy and that, I suppose is the next step. I would have to convince my landlords it is worth the hassle for them, and I would also have to find someone I could trust to live with.
Better by far though than what I could afford on my own around here. I've lived in places like that before and I can't go back. Which is where the suicide comes in. Logically I know it is better to survive in a dump than be dead. There's part of me though that won't do it again because I would become terminally depressed with no chance of recovery this time. I've lived with the dealers on the landing, the alcoholics with their fights and chaos, the crazies running amok with a carving knife. The dog shit on the stairs and the constant thump, thump of a sound system somewhere.
I have worked hard to get out of all of that. I've worked hard to be a part of my little community, to keep myself afloat, and to give back. To get out of the lay-by of life and be part of things.
-0-
Just heard! My landlords have come back with an offer I can just manage. Just. I was going to delete the above but I'm keeping it there as a reminder never to give up hope.
Tuesday, 2 February 2016
On claiming welfare benefits.
Have you ever been caught in heavy surf, knocked off your feet by a wave larger than you were expecting, struggling to your feet before the next one comes in and, at the same time trying to make it back to dry land. After a while you tire and panic sets in? Do you know that feeling?
The last few weeks and months of my life have been very much like that. With my savings dwindling and my health deteriorating I decided to try again for Personal Independence Payment which has been a load of hard work for absolutely no return. I did not score a single point out of the 8 required to qualify. A few weeks before this I had attended a work capability assessment to see if I still qualify for Employment Support Allowance. I was turned away as they did not have enough staff to assess me so I re-attended, two weeks after my PIP assessment. A disheartening and very exposing experience which left me stranded on the sofa with exhaustion and pain for several days. I am still waiting for the result.
Yesterday I bit the bullet and spoke to my landlady. I will not be able to afford the rent after the end of March unless they reduce it to the point they are losing money hand over fist. This is the first home I have felt truly comfortable and safe in since I became ill some 12 years ago. My neighbours are my friends, the setting is rather beautiful and the house warm and spacious. In the six years I have been here I have made connections and become deeply attached. It is going to be a bereavement to leave and without PIP, or the ability to work I am not sure even what I could afford. That is even if a landlord will be prepared to have a tenant on benefits. Many landlord insurance policies will not pay out if the tenant is a claimant.
To be honest, I have felt like walking into the woods with a spade and a sheaf of medication. I'm not quite sure what the spade is about, maybe it's to give me time to have second thoughts while I'm digging myself in. I can't kill myself though, I have a daughter and grand-daughter who would never forgive me. I am wondering if there may come a time when even that safety-valve thought is not enough. Like if I think they would be better off without me. Living in the UK now, with chronic illness without resources is a miserable existence. I feel I have been marginalised, parked up in the lay by of life, and now dehumanised. Punished even.
There is no help any more. I really need a referral to secondary mental health services which I have had in the past and it has been helpful. Now the support I received 5 years ago is no longer there. It has all been thrown back onto the GP who is doing her best but who has made it very clear she's not there to listen to my problems. I am allowed one symptom at a time, which is how she sees me, a list of symptoms to be cured. The letter she wrote to support my PIP application cost me £35 and was a small, jumbled paragraph of medical jargon which did not in any way help my cause. I don't think she was awake when she wrote it, which is probably very near the truth.
Even the good guys, the voluntary sector, is now a very uneven affair. I went to the Citizens Advice Bureau the other day who have helped me in the past with getting my benefits back when they were illegally taken away from me. I sat in a crowded waiting room and then was asked to discuss my problem in front of that crowd and told that the "funding for that project (help with PIP applications) was finished". The piecemeal funding is a feature of the Big Society we weren't told about.
I am getting used to having my confidentiality breached these days. Safeguarding standards seem to be slipping. I became upset in front of all those people in the CAB waiting room, or Hub as it is euphemistically called, and the assistant very loudly started searching for "the mental health leaflet". It was two hours of my life I won't get back and today I'm having to curtail activities in order to recover. I'm still left with the problem of knowing the best way to get the PIP decision looked at again; what to say to convince the decision maker the assessor didn't record the reality.
I'm just hoping the next wave hurls me up onto the shingle.
The last few weeks and months of my life have been very much like that. With my savings dwindling and my health deteriorating I decided to try again for Personal Independence Payment which has been a load of hard work for absolutely no return. I did not score a single point out of the 8 required to qualify. A few weeks before this I had attended a work capability assessment to see if I still qualify for Employment Support Allowance. I was turned away as they did not have enough staff to assess me so I re-attended, two weeks after my PIP assessment. A disheartening and very exposing experience which left me stranded on the sofa with exhaustion and pain for several days. I am still waiting for the result.
Yesterday I bit the bullet and spoke to my landlady. I will not be able to afford the rent after the end of March unless they reduce it to the point they are losing money hand over fist. This is the first home I have felt truly comfortable and safe in since I became ill some 12 years ago. My neighbours are my friends, the setting is rather beautiful and the house warm and spacious. In the six years I have been here I have made connections and become deeply attached. It is going to be a bereavement to leave and without PIP, or the ability to work I am not sure even what I could afford. That is even if a landlord will be prepared to have a tenant on benefits. Many landlord insurance policies will not pay out if the tenant is a claimant.
To be honest, I have felt like walking into the woods with a spade and a sheaf of medication. I'm not quite sure what the spade is about, maybe it's to give me time to have second thoughts while I'm digging myself in. I can't kill myself though, I have a daughter and grand-daughter who would never forgive me. I am wondering if there may come a time when even that safety-valve thought is not enough. Like if I think they would be better off without me. Living in the UK now, with chronic illness without resources is a miserable existence. I feel I have been marginalised, parked up in the lay by of life, and now dehumanised. Punished even.
There is no help any more. I really need a referral to secondary mental health services which I have had in the past and it has been helpful. Now the support I received 5 years ago is no longer there. It has all been thrown back onto the GP who is doing her best but who has made it very clear she's not there to listen to my problems. I am allowed one symptom at a time, which is how she sees me, a list of symptoms to be cured. The letter she wrote to support my PIP application cost me £35 and was a small, jumbled paragraph of medical jargon which did not in any way help my cause. I don't think she was awake when she wrote it, which is probably very near the truth.
Even the good guys, the voluntary sector, is now a very uneven affair. I went to the Citizens Advice Bureau the other day who have helped me in the past with getting my benefits back when they were illegally taken away from me. I sat in a crowded waiting room and then was asked to discuss my problem in front of that crowd and told that the "funding for that project (help with PIP applications) was finished". The piecemeal funding is a feature of the Big Society we weren't told about.
I am getting used to having my confidentiality breached these days. Safeguarding standards seem to be slipping. I became upset in front of all those people in the CAB waiting room, or Hub as it is euphemistically called, and the assistant very loudly started searching for "the mental health leaflet". It was two hours of my life I won't get back and today I'm having to curtail activities in order to recover. I'm still left with the problem of knowing the best way to get the PIP decision looked at again; what to say to convince the decision maker the assessor didn't record the reality.
I'm just hoping the next wave hurls me up onto the shingle.
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