Adventures in Benefits...
Well, after lots of sleep, some cookie dough and some orange juice, I'm finally energised enough to tell the story of what happened yesterday.
It all started early, when I had to ring the SAC to find out why no-one had been replying to our e-mails for three weeks now. Turns out they hadn't been getting them, which doesn't exactly fill me with hope as to the servers over there. Also, Ralph our wonderful advisor is away till Monday, so I ended up having an emergency consult of sorts with one of the other advisors, who was very helpful, but didn't really know enough about our horribly convuluted case.
Bottom line was: we had no food, no money and no sign of either appearing in the near future. Yesterday was also Day 13 of the "14-Working-Day countdown" for the Housing Benefit to get their arses in gear and sort out my claim, and I wasn't holding out much hope that it was suddenly going to appear on our doormat today (surprise, surprise: it didn't). So I wanted to know if there was anything they or I could do. The best the SAC could do was give us an emergency appointment for Monday with Ralph, and contact the woman in charge of the Hardship Fund applications to see if she could speed up looking at Nick's claim. (I hope they didn't mention my name - that woman hates me ever since I dared to question one of her decisions). They also suggested ringing the Housing Benefit offices tomorrow (aka today) to see what was going on, if we didn't receive anything.
Well, I was feeling antsy and not too optimistic that everything would be sorted in 24 hours, so I rang them yesterday anyway and asked to speak to the woman who's been dealing personally with my case since March (apparently). When I rang in the morning I was told she had just gone off to a hospital appointment and wouldn't be back till after lunch. I didn't believe this in the slightest, but since there wasn't much I could do about it I rang back just after one. This time she had 'gone home sick'. The guy I spoke to on the phone was quite insistant that he could help, however, so eventually I gave him the details so he could look them up on the computer.
Oh my. He then informed me that they hadn't received my application form. Normally, I might have believed him as the postal service round here is so unreliable, but since they'd sent the documents we sent along with the form for evidence back two days after we posted it to them, I knew he was outright lying. When I informed him of this he blustered his way through a "I don't know what's happened" excuse, and then suggested I ring back next Thursday to see if they had made any headway. After I'd told him of our financial and food situation. Thanks for nothing. The Ombudsmen will be hearing of this.
Out of stubborn desperation more than anything, I consulted my Welfare Benefits Handbook (best £25 I've ever spent, and that includes things like my limited edition Battle Royale DVD) and found that I was still eligible for a Crisis Loan from the SS. So I girded my loins (or would have if I knew what 'girded' meant and how I was to do it to any part of my body, let alone my loins) and set out up to Hanley with Nick's walking stick because my left leg and lower back have been playing up all week. There I discovered that they had a different setup for applying for Crisis Loans than they did last year (which had involved sitting around for five or six hours, having someone impersonally and incorrectly fill out your needs on an application form and fax it off to some outside office, and then be told that they were only going to give you 5-10% of what you needed) where you now spoke directly to the person who made the decisions over in that distant and inpersonal office.
Cue waiting for half an hour to use the only phone in the whole place, with nowhere to sit (if I'd sat in the waiting area, someone would have got my place in the 'queue') twenty minutes on hold waiting for them to find my files, ten minutes trying to explain just how wrong they had my deatils (how can I be applying for 'Severe Disablement Allowance' when it's been obsolete since 2001?) and then another hour waiting for their decision. At which point they told me that, out of the £150 I'd asked for to support Nick and I for the two weeks till I could apply for Income Support, I was being given £137.80. Kick ass!
So I have to say I like their new system, even if it does involve some all-new awkwardness. You no longer have to wait for hours to speak to someone behind a plexiglass window who would rather see you dead than deal with your pleas, and gets all your details wrong when they put them on the form; you plead your case directly to the person who makes the decision - so my 'poor sad orphan' defence cames into play.
After that I called Nick to get him out of bed and come into Hanley, and we did our first proper shopping trip in over a month. So now we have enough food to last us well over two weeks (wouldn't they be pleased if they knew how well we spent the money?), including some treats like a couple of tubs of cookie dough for me, some dutch crisbakes for Nick, and some raspberries and cream. Plus, this morning a letter from Nick's mother arrived, and she had sent us £100 because she'd been told how much we were struggling, so we can make the food last even longer now!
I kept telling Nick that things would get better; now, finally it's happening. (Which is good because I hate being proved wrong, even by the universe)
One thing that did occur to me while I was at the SS offices was the fact that, simply out of a need to survive, I now know a hell of a lot about applying for benefits. There's very little privacy in these places, you see, so you end up hearing details of everyone else's cases whether you want to or not. Listening to people trying to get benefits or help or whatever made me realise that I had a much better grasp of the system than they did - possibly more than the SS wants me to have (heh heh...). Maybe if my health improves I could do a couple of hours a week at a Citizen's Advice Bureau putting my knowledge of DLA/IS/HB/CTB/IB to use... as well as the appeals process and contacting the Ombudsmen... Hell, I could even put up a page or two on my website on the subject...
It all started early, when I had to ring the SAC to find out why no-one had been replying to our e-mails for three weeks now. Turns out they hadn't been getting them, which doesn't exactly fill me with hope as to the servers over there. Also, Ralph our wonderful advisor is away till Monday, so I ended up having an emergency consult of sorts with one of the other advisors, who was very helpful, but didn't really know enough about our horribly convuluted case.
Bottom line was: we had no food, no money and no sign of either appearing in the near future. Yesterday was also Day 13 of the "14-Working-Day countdown" for the Housing Benefit to get their arses in gear and sort out my claim, and I wasn't holding out much hope that it was suddenly going to appear on our doormat today (surprise, surprise: it didn't). So I wanted to know if there was anything they or I could do. The best the SAC could do was give us an emergency appointment for Monday with Ralph, and contact the woman in charge of the Hardship Fund applications to see if she could speed up looking at Nick's claim. (I hope they didn't mention my name - that woman hates me ever since I dared to question one of her decisions). They also suggested ringing the Housing Benefit offices tomorrow (aka today) to see what was going on, if we didn't receive anything.
Well, I was feeling antsy and not too optimistic that everything would be sorted in 24 hours, so I rang them yesterday anyway and asked to speak to the woman who's been dealing personally with my case since March (apparently). When I rang in the morning I was told she had just gone off to a hospital appointment and wouldn't be back till after lunch. I didn't believe this in the slightest, but since there wasn't much I could do about it I rang back just after one. This time she had 'gone home sick'. The guy I spoke to on the phone was quite insistant that he could help, however, so eventually I gave him the details so he could look them up on the computer.
Oh my. He then informed me that they hadn't received my application form. Normally, I might have believed him as the postal service round here is so unreliable, but since they'd sent the documents we sent along with the form for evidence back two days after we posted it to them, I knew he was outright lying. When I informed him of this he blustered his way through a "I don't know what's happened" excuse, and then suggested I ring back next Thursday to see if they had made any headway. After I'd told him of our financial and food situation. Thanks for nothing. The Ombudsmen will be hearing of this.
Out of stubborn desperation more than anything, I consulted my Welfare Benefits Handbook (best £25 I've ever spent, and that includes things like my limited edition Battle Royale DVD) and found that I was still eligible for a Crisis Loan from the SS. So I girded my loins (or would have if I knew what 'girded' meant and how I was to do it to any part of my body, let alone my loins) and set out up to Hanley with Nick's walking stick because my left leg and lower back have been playing up all week. There I discovered that they had a different setup for applying for Crisis Loans than they did last year (which had involved sitting around for five or six hours, having someone impersonally and incorrectly fill out your needs on an application form and fax it off to some outside office, and then be told that they were only going to give you 5-10% of what you needed) where you now spoke directly to the person who made the decisions over in that distant and inpersonal office.
Cue waiting for half an hour to use the only phone in the whole place, with nowhere to sit (if I'd sat in the waiting area, someone would have got my place in the 'queue') twenty minutes on hold waiting for them to find my files, ten minutes trying to explain just how wrong they had my deatils (how can I be applying for 'Severe Disablement Allowance' when it's been obsolete since 2001?) and then another hour waiting for their decision. At which point they told me that, out of the £150 I'd asked for to support Nick and I for the two weeks till I could apply for Income Support, I was being given £137.80. Kick ass!
So I have to say I like their new system, even if it does involve some all-new awkwardness. You no longer have to wait for hours to speak to someone behind a plexiglass window who would rather see you dead than deal with your pleas, and gets all your details wrong when they put them on the form; you plead your case directly to the person who makes the decision - so my 'poor sad orphan' defence cames into play.
After that I called Nick to get him out of bed and come into Hanley, and we did our first proper shopping trip in over a month. So now we have enough food to last us well over two weeks (wouldn't they be pleased if they knew how well we spent the money?), including some treats like a couple of tubs of cookie dough for me, some dutch crisbakes for Nick, and some raspberries and cream. Plus, this morning a letter from Nick's mother arrived, and she had sent us £100 because she'd been told how much we were struggling, so we can make the food last even longer now!
I kept telling Nick that things would get better; now, finally it's happening. (Which is good because I hate being proved wrong, even by the universe)
One thing that did occur to me while I was at the SS offices was the fact that, simply out of a need to survive, I now know a hell of a lot about applying for benefits. There's very little privacy in these places, you see, so you end up hearing details of everyone else's cases whether you want to or not. Listening to people trying to get benefits or help or whatever made me realise that I had a much better grasp of the system than they did - possibly more than the SS wants me to have (heh heh...). Maybe if my health improves I could do a couple of hours a week at a Citizen's Advice Bureau putting my knowledge of DLA/IS/HB/CTB/IB to use... as well as the appeals process and contacting the Ombudsmen... Hell, I could even put up a page or two on my website on the subject...