One of the things that one encounters when one has a condition like this is a huge amount of paperwork. And, and I was interested to see in a recent television programme that the, they, they, they said which of the various government forms were the, considered, generally considered to be the worst ones. And one of them it turns out was the Disabled Living Allowance form, and another one was the Carer's Allowance form. Both of which are quite important when you have a condition like this. We filled in the Disabled Living Allowance form ourselves initially. Which, you know, even with a university degree and so on and so forth was really quite hard work. It was about, I can't remember, it was about forty pages, something like that. When it came to getting the higher level, the highest level of the, oh, dear, what is it called? …Attendance Allowance, we were offered, it was suggested to us that we should bring the Citizens Advice Bureau into it, because they had people who knew these forms pretty well. So anyway we contacted the CAB and somebody came out and helped us. But they really were very good. That actually speeded things up quite a lot. Certainly saved a lot of sort of scratching of heads and sort of wondering what the best answer was. Now again the Carer's Allowance form is over thirty pages I think. So anybody who doesn't like filling in forms, they would probably be well advised to consider their local CAB, who will usually have somebody who is very familiar with the forms. I think that's probably all one needs to say there.
Has there been any, and actually getting the Disability Living Allowance, did that come through okay finally?
Yes, it took I think about six weeks maybe, something like that, for the Disability Living Allowance, for the, for that to come through. So you do have to be prepared for that. It does take time. And I think the same is true of things like the Carer's Allowance. These things don't happen instantaneously. Although obviously providing you make sure that things are properly time-stamped when they go in, you should get everything backdated.
And have there been any other financial implications from your illness?
I mean I suppose I'm fortunate enough, fortunate enough to have quite a, quite a well-paid job. So on occasion we've bought things ourselves rather than going through the system and sort of waiting a long time to get it. Of course not everybody has that option. But on the other hand, on the other hand things like, we, we converted a utility room to a downstairs shower room with special facilities for me. We, we could have gone through the sort of local authority support with that. But we, we, we worked out that in fact the cost really wouldn't, when you looked at what I was earning and so on, we would probably not be getting much help for it anyway. So there was little point in hanging around waiting for it to come through, since it could have taken six months to get. So that was another of the things that we paid for ourselves. |
