Tag Archives: DLA

The Human Side of Politics

I rarely write about politics, although I have taken part in other media regarding the utter disregard the national political narrative seems to have for disabled people, despite the fact there are 13.9 million of us in the UK.

Since the global recession, the optics have been cleverly shifted away from the very source of the problem – the finance sector – to the most vulnerable of its victims – us. And when that ‘us’ have no voice, it’s a recipe for right-wing thinking.

Slashing disability benefits was a good place to start and allowed the media free reign to wage war on us, and how. We were cast as the ones draining the economy, not the foolhardy bankers. It’s a staggering leap, but the press and public latched on to it with a vengeance.

Living in a marginal seat, I’m going to share my experience of my previous MP, Labour’s Anna McMorrin and her Conservative predecessor.

Long story short, Anna McMorrin displayed a deep compassion not often seen in today’s politics.

A few years ago, I noticed that the parents of a local school took every disabled space in the main car park, behind the shops where I live, twice, three times a day. I asked a few of them why they did this as there were plenty of other non-disabled spaces. Their replies were illuminating:

‘Disabled people don’t go out this early’

‘It’s only for five minutes, what’s your problem?’

‘They’re all scammers anyway’

When I met my Conservative MP canvassing for votes outside those shops one day, I approached him and asked him if he would help with this matter. He told me it wasn’t his problem and I should speak to the school involved. When I said I already had and was told, ‘it’s not my problem, speak to your MP’, he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough and in an extremely dismissive manner.

Fast-forward to October 2017, five years after I was awarded a lifetime Disability Living Allowance(DLA) due to my diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Until MS is curable, it makes sense; it’s a progressive, degenerative illness.

I received my ‘invitation’ to reapply for the new Personal Independence Payment as DLA would be stopped. I went into a tailspin – for five years I had tried to remain positive, focus on the positive and, well, be as positive as I could be living with MS. Now I was invited to write endless answers about how much MS had negatively impacted my life and would continue to do so.

It was a desolate, soul-destroying experience, picking apart my life in minute, excruciatingly personal detail. I went in to a deep depression and had to ask for further time to complete the paperwork. However, I was blessed to have wonderful support in Stuart and Marie Nixon who held my hand and kept me sane throughout the whole experience.

I submitted the paperwork on Christmas Eve 2017. On 13th February 2018, I had a face-to-face assessment at home by a Capita representative. I could write endless blogs about this car-crash, but suffice to say, she somehow observed that I was absolutely fine (without any Quality of Life measures or fatigue measures undertaken, amongst many other complaints) without taking her eyes off her computer. In fact, she appeared stressed, hurried and short-tempered and told me she had had a long day and I was the last on her list.

Of course, the next month, my benefit was reduced drastically. I send a mandatory reconsideration letter. This was turned down. I sent an appeal for a tribunal, and was informed at the end of June 2018 that it would be held at ‘some point in the future’.

And then fate intervened; someone who reads my blog met my MP, as-then Labour’s Anna McMorrin, and told her of my case. This person (still anonymous to this day), emailed me, urging me to contact Anna as she could help me. I didn’t hold out much hope, but was running out of options, so I called her office and spoke to a lovely case-worker, Lauren. I sent documents over and waited for the rebuttal.

It never happened. Instead, Anna and her team fast-tracked my appeal, moving it from a normal PIP tribunal to a District Tribunal Judge. By this time, I was in hospital for a hernia operation, as if MS wasn’t enough. After two nights under observation, I came home to a letter – in my absence, I was awarded PIP.

To add some context to how much this means to me – the loss of DLA meant I was perilously close to homelessness. In preparation, I had already contacted shelters and advice-lines as to what my next steps could be and the outlook was bleak. I have no partner to fall back on and due to MS, I work part-time so all living expenses were my responsibility, with the added stress of factoring in time off for MS problems. I spent endless hours working out the figures and they simply didn’t add up. It was a tipping point.

In short, Anna McMorrin has kept me in the house I have made home for me and my son for the last 15 years. I am not in a shelter, awaiting rehousing. I have breathing space, so I can pursue my dreams of further study. I feel safe.

My body might continue to conspire against me and it does so on a daily basis. But to know that I still have my own personal space, and to keep hold of the only home my son has ever consciously known, means the world.

I believe we have a Conservative candidate parachuted in from London. He may well have grown up in Cardiff. I grew up in Glasgow, left as a teenager, but would never claim to understand the intrinsic social problems there now. I do not want this person to represent me.

Anna McMorrin restored my faith in politics and for that reason, I will support her all the way, as she did for me.

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12 Minutes …

For many of us going through the DLA to PIP process, it’s a devastating slide into everything we never wanted to face.

What can’t you do. And why?

After years of muddling through, re-adapting, making concessions for MS, we have to admit our endless ‘shortcomings’. Our failings.

We realise, sometimes with a huge thud, just what we can’t do. I plunged into a deep depression, because I actually thought I was doing ok, bar walking into walls and falling asleep at the slightest opportunity.

My forms took weeks to fill in. Painstaking. Personal, hideously personal. Numerous extra pages of ‘Cont. Info’ were included.

48 pages in all. Basically, my entire life in one document.

As a birthday present last week, a huge pile of tribunal papers arrived along with cards and flowers. Nice touch.

Buried in amongst over a hundred pages, I discovered that my form had a ‘considered/writing up time’ of 12 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty impressive. To read a compressed life with MS, all 48 pages, plus consider them and write a response in 12 minutes is speedy by anyone’s standard. Bearing in mind it’s not a new claim, but a transition from a lifetime award for DLA.

The result?

A face-to-face consideration was required. Which happened – apparently – although neither me nor my witness recognise the meeting she refers to. And this ‘health care professional’ appears to have the upper hand in my forthcoming tribunal.

Her ‘evidence’ is the ‘truth’. She was here, in my house, for 50 minutes in total. That includes losing her way (my mum directed her on the phone), coming in, setting up her laptop, talking to me (without looking at me), packing up and leaving.

It appears my entire tribunal rests upon her ‘clinical’ finding and ‘observations’.

I’m impressed.

To destroy someone’s life in 50 minutes is bad enough, but the lead-in took 12.

I am that insignificant. All my pain, my symptoms, my life being turned on its head. Not only that, the end of my planned future, being sacked from work, the endless relapses, the invasive treatments I’ve had. Not to mention their side-effects (hello, Fatty-Puff-Me).

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the person who knows me and my MS probably better than most, my wonderful MS nurse, cannot write a statement for the tribunal. Aside from the logistical nightmare that this would cause for the under-funded department, they have been ‘told’ by the DWP that their evidence is ‘meaningless’ and ‘patient-directed’ so therefore inadmissible.

So I face a tribunal based almost solely upon evidence of someone who does not know me, triggered by someone in an office who does not know me.

Ok.

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Trials and Tribunals

Hmm.

What do you think would happen if you missed a DWP deadline, with no explanation?

Yep, you’d be ‘struck off’ and told to apply again, if at all.

Since first being contacted for my transition from DLA to PIP in October last year, I have hit all deadlines bar one – I was extremely ill and needed a couple of extra weeks to complete the forms.

The DWP were swiftly informed and sent out re-adjusted timelines accordingly.

Since then, I have had a decision, had a home visit, had another decision, had a mandatory reconsideration and been turned down on the points I made.

So now it’s going to a tribunal. I duly sent off the forms and had a letter back from the HM Courts & Tribunals Service. The DWP had 28 days to send a response.

That date was 3rd August. Hearing nothing, I phoned the Tribunals Service for information. I discovered the DWP has ignored them and will be sent a letter to prompt them for a response. Anyone here ever had a gentle ‘prompt’ letter with no sanctions attached?

This letter will give them an extra 14 days to respond. If they still ignore my case, a judge will decide how best to proceed.

If the DWP had responded on time, a likely tribunal would be held at the end of November this year, a full 14 months after first starting this endless, pointless paper trail. 22 weeks is the standard waiting time from lodging an appeal to it being heard.

With their non-response, it’ll probably be Christmas Eve.

To be fair, the woman I spoke to at the Tribunals Service was amazing; my story is nothing she has not heard before. Day after day she takes similar phone-calls, digging down in to the whole ‘lifetime’ award scenario for incurable illness, such as MS.

As an unexpected aside, a wonderful regular reader of my blog met my MP at a local event last week and outlined my case to her, even giving her my blog address. Long story short, I have since contacted my MP’s office and hopefully they will be taking up my fight, alongside my fantastically patient supporters who helped me fill in all the forms.

I’ve just dug out a letter from Capita about my home assessment. Clearly stated, there is the line, ‘if you fail to attend without a good reason, the decision-maker at the DWP is likely to refuse your claim’.

One rule for them ..?

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Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

To appeal or not to appeal?

That is the question.

I am tired. Utterly exhausted.

I first got the DLA to PIP forms back in October last year. We’ll soon be in July, and my Mandatory Reconsideration request was turned down, as expected. Over 80% are.

We’re talking almost ten months, to complete one ‘award’. And I’ll be reviewed again in three years.

After their initial assessment, I have been awarded the daily living needs, standard rate. In turn, this allows me to access the disability rates of both Working Tax Credit and Housing Benefit.

If I go to an appeal, there is every chance that could be reduced, and I would lose that access to the other benefits. And then I would be facing homelessness. Despite working.

It’s a gamble, and a huge one.

There’s two ways of thinking. The first, outlined above: take what I’ve been given, live with it and wait to be reassessed in three years, when no doubt my MS will be worse and at the very least I’ll have a ‘proper’ mental health diagnosis. Which annoys me as I’ve been proactive by seeing a counsellor for years, yet to the DWP, it is meaningless.

The second way is to apply for an appeal and hope that the panel will understand the intrinsic and very complicated nature of MS.

The new 20 metre rule makes matters even more difficult. It used to be 50 metres and it’s a cause being championed by the MS Society right now.

I would invite anyone from the DWP to my house from around 2pm onwards, to witness my struggles. The evenings I don’t cook. The evenings I spend lying on the sofa. The evenings when the nerve pain is beyond comprehension, despite being on 600mg of nerve pain medication a day, the highest sanctioned for MS. Where to go from here?

For me, the sticking point is the lies. Fair play, if the assessor saw me on a ‘good day’, I could understand her comments, which have been faithfully regurgitated by the person looking in to my Mandatory Reconsideration (who hasn’t met me). She didn’t.

It galls, a government department, coming in to my house, sitting with me and a witness, then writing absolute lies – in fact, it is seriously messing with my mind. I was there. I know what happened.

So here I am, not knowing quite which way to go. Stay safe, yet insulted. Or fighting my corner, with every chance I could lose my house of the last 14 years.

I work. I’ve raised a teenager on my own since he was a baby and now he is in University. And I’m dealing with MS. I’ve not given up.

I think they actually want me to.

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Bordering on The Ridiculous

So, I have my reply from the DWP, tucked into one of their notorious dung-brown envelopes.

I applied for a ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’, after their initial decision to massively decrease my lifetime Disability Living Allowance.

In a nutshell, according to them, I am a liar.

They even (and this kills me more than anything), use the word, ‘perceive’, as in, ‘You said you can’t do such and such, due to perceived pain and poor balance … yet …’

First off, I would love to know how perceived pain and poor balance feels (as opposed to the very real pain I feel, and have medication for), and secondly, how exactly is MS pain measured? Or indeed, balance?

Secondly, the decision of this mandatory assessor appears to be weighted heavily in favour of the so-called assessor who came to see me face to face in my house, and then proceeded to ignore me (but it’s ok, she was an A&E nurse and knows loads about MS).

It’s fascinating, how much she derived about living with MS, considering she was looking at her computer and checking her watch the whole time (she told us we were the ‘last of five or so and she was tired’).

What I experience is very real. No-one is on 600mg of Pregabalin a day (the limit) for nerve pain, if they don’t have nerve pain. And at my last three appointments with my neurologist, I have mentioned it doesn’t even touch the sides.

And as for balance? I have very well-documented balance issues, hence the name of my blog, which was created seven whole years ago, ‘Stumbling In Flats.’ The clue is in the name.

One of my first symptoms even before being diagnosed? Balance. Foot drop. Walking funny.

A large part of their letter concerned my work: I’m engaged, I walk, I converse. Yes, I do. But not always. There is a reason I work for my friend. There is a reason I was sacked from my last job.

It’s called Disability Discrimination and is heavily legislated, but it won’t stop firms, such as my previous employer, from sacking me the minute I had MS symptoms.

It would appear the DWP would prefer me to disengage entirely from society, merely to prove a point.

But which point/indicator on their scale would this qualify for?

NUL – Are You Dead Yet?

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