Struggling to get help

I read Louise Timlin’s letter – The Cost of Living Crisis (Wokingham Today, April 7).

Much poverty could be averted, if people who are entitled to benefits firstly, get them, and then, keep them.

Recently, I contacted the Department of Work and Pensions, with regard to a lady who had been required, by them, to complete an application for the continuation of her Employment Support Allowance.

They lost the first Application

Form, so she had to submit a second.

Then they found the original form, so she had been required to plough through 40 pages – twice.

I explained to the Department of Work and Pensions, that the lady had been diagnosed with schizophrenia 40 years previously, and had been on medication ever since.

Overnight change was unlikely, and her reassessment for benefit unnecessary.

I got the Benefit for her, but not without a struggle.

Then, I accompanied another mentally ill lady, to an assessment for Personal Independence Payment. To qualify for this benefit, you need to score a minimum of eight points. This lady was awarded two.

On her behalf, I submitted to the Department of Work and Pensions, a 2,500 word report – detailing all this lady’s mental, and indeed, physical, disabilities.

By contrast, I awarded her 54 points.

I got the Benefit for her – but not without a struggle.

Then, I completed an application

form for Employment Support Allowance for a man suffering from a number of disabilities.

The Department of Work and Pensions claimed not to have received this Application, even though it had been sent by Special Delivery. They said that they could not send me a second form, but that the man would have to apply for Universal Credit, online.

I explained that a vulnerable person can sit, in comfort, with a cup of tea, in the crisis house lounge while

I complete the forms.

Struggling, alone, and online, people cannot cope with pages and pages of questions, and will give up. I shall get the benefit for this man, but not without a struggle.

I also read the report ‘Celebrating Success, and Building for the Future of Social Care’ (Wokingham Today, March 17).

It is no good ‘celebrating’ social carers; you have to pay them, properly! A carer who brought a mentally ill man to our drop-in centre,

said that she liked care work, but struggled to meet living costs. She received only the Minimum Wage – while her son – at half her age – was earning twice as much as she did – working on a building site. The argument runs that people who work in social care, do so for love, and not for the money, but love does not pay the bills, and there is much truth in the old saying – ‘Love flies out of the window, when poverty knocks on the door’.

Interestingly, the argument is

not applied to workers in other vocations. Teachers and doctors are paid, properly. All this explains the national shortage of social care workers.

We people, who run charities, may well be doing our work, for love, but constantly struggling to get people their Benefits, means that I am, definitely, not in in love, with the Department of Work and Pensions.

Pam Jenkinson, The Wokingham Crisis House.