Showing posts with label community care grant. Show all posts

Bendy Begging

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Huge advance thank you to anyone who donates. 

Taking the care out of community

So I finally got round to phoning up the local authority's welfare rights department about being turned down for a community care grant.

I wish I'd not bothered wasting my time on the phone call, let alone applying for the community care grant in the first place.

It seems that the local welfare rights department won't assist with social fund decisions because they disagree that there is no right of appeal, only review for social fund applications. Whilst I agree that the no right of appeal is fundamentally wrong I think that welfare rights should be dealing with any welfare problem not just the one's they think they should. Particularly because this welfare rights department are part of the local authority.

The welfare rights 'expert' I spoke to advised me that none of the items I applied for on my community care grant will be covered by a community care grant. This is because the items I applied for are primarily medical and as such should legally be supplied by other state funded agencies. There is a chance I may get some funding for a mattress but no chance of getting funding for the specialist tempur mattress. The community care grant may provide funds for an averagely priced mattress as that is an essential item but the tempur mattress is needed for primarily medical reasons, ie to reduce my night time dislocating so that cost should apparently be funded from elsewhere. It seems community care grants will be refused for any item considered to be for 'medical' needs.

On my community care grant application I asked for help with the costs of a tempur mattress, a mobility scooter, ramps for access with the scooter, a storage shed for the scooter and specialist shower chair. I didn't expect to be funded for all of the items but I had hoped for some of the cost to be contributed by the social fund.

The mobility scooter is supposed to be funded out of the Disability Living Allowance High Rate Mobility Allowance, but like many disabled people I have found it more cost effective to use that money for living on. I simply can't afford to hand over approximately £170 a month for a vehicle. I'm very, very fortunate to have someone who wants to buy me a mobility scooter so avoiding that issue but I need to meet the cost of storage shed and ramps to be able to get that scooter in the first place. I could, as some have suggested, apply for an electric wheelchair instead but the rules on wheelchair provision via the NHS in my local authority state that I'd have to use that wheelchair indoors for a minimum of six months before I'd be eligible to even be considered for an outdoor chair. I live in a tiny one bedroom flat with no room for a power wheelchair, would need more ramps installed to use it and probably couldn't get a power chair through any of the inner doors even if I was willing to use a powerchair indoors and lose all the benefits of staying on my feet in my own home. Welfare rights would not assist with this problem as they are funded by the same local authority as the wheelchair service.

The only advice welfare rights gave to me was to approach social services to be reassessed for the ramps as they are responsible for adaptations to housing. Frankly I'd rather die. It sounds terribly dramatic but I've spent years getting over the damage caused to my life by incompetent and inappropriate assessments from social services and the potential benefit of getting some funding for ramps is simply not worth the problems social services are guaranteed to cause.

So, it's back to square one. My advice-don't become disabled in the UK, the bureaucracy will kill you long before any disability could. I don't suppose anyone wants to buy me a proper tempur mattress ?

Don't bother...

I'm not sure why, but regardless I'm doing a pretty good impression of a sulky, petulant child today. Perhaps it's because I'm so tired, perhaps because my hip is doing a better job of hurting me than any paratrooper PT instructor could do, or just because because.

Being turned down for the Community Care Grant I applied for back at the start of February has absolutely definitely got something to do with it though.

I phoned yesterday to try and chase up what had become of the form neighbour and I spent hours filling out. After the obligatory time on hold I got through to an unusually honest lady who told me that I could try phoning back but not to bother because I wouldn't get through. The telephone software used by Jobcentre plus* is set up to allow 70 people waiting on hold to ask for application forms but only 20 for enquiries about existing applications. If you're unlucky enough to be no's 21 or 71 in the queue the system cuts you off. Politely mind, there's no swearing or anything, just a dead phone line. Which is not good for the blood pressure after endless time spent trying to press button 1 to speak to operator 2 about issue 3 dealt with in department 5 living in corridor 6 all whilst desperately trying to stop the grinding of teeth in time to tinny classical muzak. I needn't have bothered, just holding the phone to my ear is enough to make my shoulder dislocate.

The Community Care Grant was for all the specialist bits and pieces I need to take life that bit closer to living and away from existing. A proper Tempur branded memory foam mattress, a mobility scooter, ramps and a storage shed. Oh and I think we put down a specialist shower seat too. Call it a crippled wish list if you like. I certainly wasn't expecting to get funding for all those things but was hoping if I put them all down and explained why I needed them then at least part of the grant money would be awarded.

I should know better by now than to hope for anything approaching a sensible decision from the insanely bureaucratic system we currently have in the UK. If I was naive enough to believe a change in government would make any difference then I'd wait and reapply in a few months time but that would be stupid. And stupid I am not.

It seems that my grant application was turned down in February, within a few days of the social fund receiving my application. Except no-one bothered to enter the details of that application on the system. So there it sat until I managed to get through to someone this morning by employing the cunning tactic of phoning whilst Jeremy Kyle was still on TV. The very nice and also honest lady who was trying to help me explained that I would need to appeal against the decision.

The details are a little fuzzy as I was tired after a night spent dislocating on an unsuitable mattress but let's gloss over that part. It was something along the lines of the nice lady entering a special note on the system to allow me to appeal a decision that wasn't entered on the system 2 months ago. The special note was needed because to send a decision for review or appeal it has to be within 7 days of that decision being made and I'm some 2 months late.

Yes, you did read that correctly. The system is so gagged by bureaucratic nonsense that permission has to be given to appeal a decision no-one notified me or their own system of.

Of course, designing a system so hideously complicated no-one understands it, then automatically rejecting applications anyway couldn't have been the original purpose. Could it?






*who, as part of the department of work and pensions oversee all social fund applications. Confused yet?

Begging

Having been boring myself into apathy over the whole Oxycontin issue I'm pleased to say my appointment at the Pain Clinic has come through. Only another two weeks to wait, though beyond 'keep tapering off the dose very gradually' I'm not sure what they're going to say. Probably working out what I want to achieve would be a good idea before getting to the appointment.

In other, equally unexciting news I finally got around to filling out the application for a Community Care Grant. Actually my neighbour filled it out, and I just had the joyful experience of listing all the reasons I am a cripple and why that means I should get grant money. It was almost, but not quite as much fun as filling out a DLA application form. I'm applying for a grant as I'm desperate for a Tempur Memory Foam Mattress and I've already wasted enough money on cheaper versions which don't work. I don't think Tempur would be nice enough to send me one for free, but after the earrings I'm ever hopeful. For the sheer hell of it I put a wish list of all the crip related things currently being saved up for and hope the CCG people take pity on me. Being a beggar is massively over rated.

I'm going to become an MP instead. It's absolutely the bestonly hope for any crip in need of equipment
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