Nothing Changes

In all the time I have had this blog nothing changes with Governments past & present. I have been reading some of my earlier posts and it was just the same then with the conservatives and labour before them. It's like deja vu. Making idle threats about making benefit cuts is counter-productive, causes anxiety, further damages health and just drives a bigger wedge between claimants and the DWP. At the same time it also has a knock on effect as it also affects other family members because they are on edge as well. It is like being pushed to the edge of a cliff and looking over and then you get pulled back, then it starts happening again as their are more rumours of benefit cuts in the forthcoming budget.

You Can't Beat a Bit of Bully pt.3

After my complaint I had to go to a meeting to see the big boss and the supervisor and basically they said that my heatlh is nobody elses business. They don't want to see me coming to work anxious. They told me that what she is doing is like treating me like the person who I was when I first started volunteering. I am not the person all wrapped up in cotton wool and things have moved on and I have made a lot of progress since then.

They said if I have any problems is to go and see them rather than contacting the agency. I just really followed what it said in the manual I got from the agency.

Since that time some new rules have been implemented in the area where I work and also due to the time of year my hours have been plummeting spectacularly. Yesterday I went to work and did 4.5 hours work and today I did 3 hours work. It will be lucky if I even do 20 hours work this week.

The woman in the morning seems to enjoy telling me there is not a lot of work to do and also seems to like to see me squirm when I have nothing to do. Going to work is kind of strange now because when I go to work I just go and pick up what I need to do and disappear. I don't need a lot of assistance and barely have anything to say. I am not very good in engaging in conversations or trying to keep a conversation going so a lot of the time I am quiet.

With my hours dropping and not doing any work in the afternoon I emailed the big boss today and I asked after I have finished working in the area I work in is there any other areas I can help in. He said he was going to talk to my supervisor and would be pleased if I could help elsewhere. I was quite surprised as I was expecting him to say no so I am going to see what happens there and I did it all by myself. It might do me some good to work with someone else or in a different environment.

Ta ta

Brain Blogger

Four Weeks On

How do?

I have been at work for four weeks now. It is a bummer that the job is with an agency but I am prepared to take that risk.

My supervisor at work has said she has already noticed that I now have a better attitude. I feel better in myself and I seem to have more energy. I don't know whether it is just me but people are different with me now. There are quite a few people who work for the same agency where I work and they now say I am one of the crew now.

The Lady from the agency rings me up every week or sends me a text to say that I am required the next week and then I get a new time-sheet and the last payslip in the post at the weekend. I get paid weekly which is different and I have been able to budget quite well so far. I could not believe it when I had my first payslip in 12 years. I was so happy I took my Wife and the Children out for a slap-up meal.

The Working Tax credits have been worked out and I am definitely better off so far. I don't know what plans the future government has for tax credits but they are crucial to me at this stage. I have also received a letter this weekend saying I qualified for Return to Work Credits of £40 a week as well. I could now be a walking talking advert for the DWP better off in work.

I now enjoy going to work more than I did before. It is going well except I have had a couple of problems which I have had to speak to the supervisor about. The Lady who I had problems with before keeps telling me when I should have my break, and she says she has to know at all times where I am. Its quite suffocating. Why don't I have an electronic tag attached to my ankle?. I did something I had not done before I stuck up for myself and I said I will go for my break when I am ready. I think she cares but she just goes the wrong way about it. I think it is also the transition from how I started on a work placement all being wrapped up in cotton wool to now being a fully fledged working person. I will see how it goes.

In other news Transfattyacid said "I guess now you are employed you will have the luxury of moaning about all those scroungers faking disability to live the life of Riley on the state". If the DWP could get the real career scroungers off benefits who give disabled people a bad name perhaps they might be able to give the time and the energy to help people with genuine disabilities.

I feel like I have been very lucky and I have had a lot of help along the way but not from the jobcentre though but from people where I volunteered. I know where I came from to where I am now and I was labelled a scrounger and it is not a nice experience. It might go ok or it might go wrong but I am just taking one day at a time and see where it takes me.

Have a nice weekend

What's the Point?

Having read recently about David Cameron wanting to get the sick and disabled off IB and into the world of work if the Conservatives get into power. I notice that the politicians seem to forget that sick/disabled people have to manage there condition/disability and then have to manage to be able to work.

I keep trying to push myself to the point where I feel like I could do a job. One of the biggest problems I have with a brain injury even after 20 years is fatigue. I get home from voluntary work and I am constantly have to fight to stop myself going to sleep as I am physically exhausted.

I have had this problem since day one of the head injury and it's made worse when I try to get back into a work situation. Yesterday I got home, got washed, had a drink, sat down and then the fight begins to not go to sleep. I usually like to have a sit down and then check my email but by this time my brain is already trying to shut me down and make me sleep. It's not like the sort of late in the evening time to go to bed tired, its difficult to describe but its not pleasant.

I often think that having a can of red bull or something like that will help keep me awake but in fact this is actually quite futile. I can have a coffee or a red bull and half hour later I am asleep for anything for 2-4 hours which is quite bizarre. This often happens so it makes the time in the afternoon/early evening a write off.

This also makes a mess of sleep as it is like instead of having a long 7 hour sleep at night I often have 2 sleeps and then I can be awake at 2 am in the morning. Somebody said to me last week that I should try going to the sleep clinic.

What is happening is in my attempt to be well enough to work is the fatigue is then crossing over into my family life. What's the point to all this?. Is this what the politicians want all in the name of getting people to work and saving there precious money?. I am only 1 person who has to manage there condition, what about all the other people who have to manage there condition everyday and then in the future going to be punished for having a disability or condition and then being forced to find work?.

see ya

Its Not My Fault Theres Not Enough Tanks In Afghanistan

I love this comment I got in my comments box the other day, its just typical of the mindset that people think that blaming the long term unemployed and people on IB for the governments incompetence and the bankers greed:

kbo1964 said: jesus wept! i pay a fortune in stopages to support thieving scumbags!

why isn't the csa chaseing absent fathers
is this why the mod can't send vehicles to afganistan

james smith

James, I sympathise with you for paying a fortune in stoppages and the MOD not having enough vehicles and the absent fathers. I think you need to be knocking on Gordon Brown's door about this and asking the bankers these questions.

I would love to get a job but with a hidden disabilty and no work history for 10 years it doesn't really make me attractive to future employers. I do voluntary work to build up a work history and a track record and I have a good record of voluntary work and I am still trying to build myself up. Lots of people do voluntary work trying to build up there history and to try and get fit enough to get back to work but they are not recognized. As far as the government are concerned all they are doing is just sitting at home watching Jeremy Kyle and drinking lager in the morning.

I want a job as much as anyone else, it would do wonders for my mental wellbeing and I would stop worrying about the nasty brown envelopes. I go to the jobcentre hoping that I can get somewhere but I afterwards I feel more depressed than before I went. I am so disillusioned. All they want me to do is apply for low paid jobs that are unrealistic and have no real prospects.

All the government and the Tories according to this article in the Times want to do is kick as many people off IB and onto JSA so they can save money. Will the jobcentre be able to cope?. Kick the 2.7m off IB onto JSA and you get 5m unemployed and then you will still be paying for me probably in higher taxes to pay for JSA.

see ya

Can I Believe in Miracles?

Its official!!!!!!!!. I can now announce on my blog that all disabilties and sickness has been cured. The Express, The Mail and The Sun have been falling over themselves due to figures recently released about the new stricter tests of the ESA. Apparently 90% of claims are actually bogus and claimants are fit for work and the newspapers are now drooling at the prospect of it being applied to all the benefit scrounging scum currently on IB. I do like the article in the mail especially because it says that people will find it better "coming off the sick" and then it has got a picture of people queuing up at the jobcentre. I am crossing off the days on my calender now.

However The London Evening Standard has gone one further and says that all 2.6m on IB are actually fit for work. I don't know where I must have been when this miracle happened because it obviously missed me.

All we want now is another 2.6 million jobs [and sympathetic employers who don't mind taking on a few disabled workers, people with mental health problems, you get the picture] to add to the existing unemployed figures, has anyone got about 6 million jobs?. That's the next miracle!.

We all now this is all bullshit and all IB claimants haven't been magically cured and there aren't jobs a plenty for all these people to take up and what people will actually be facing is Jobseekers Allowance, £60 a week, workfare, more crap schemes to go on that do nothing to help and actually make you feel more depressed and slamming the glass door at where you go to sign on, I can't wait to have my own turn.

Roll on Arbeit Macht Frei

Have A Go At IB Claimants Week , Haven't We Been Through All This Before?

How do?

As it seems to be bash the IB claimants week this week in the newspapers I thought I might like to add a few points. It may well be alright having a go at IB claimants claiming they are lazy, fat, worthless pieces of shit who deserve all there benefits stopped and having it all claimed back, having them sent to the workhouse, starved, put in jail, do community work [I didn't know community work was paying so much these days] and the like but are there any better opportunities for people on IB in the recession?. I think not unless you fancy work focused interviews or the pathways to nowhere, thank the politicians and the banking fat cats with there £650000 year pensions for that, no doubt it will get a lot worse before it gets better so lets all get together and blame the usual easy targets on IB for it.

It will no doubt get worse for IB claimants. it always get worse for IB claimants unless of course you can magically recover or manage your condition and be able to find a rewarding job that pays more than the minimum wage so its actually worth doing.

All these people who write this crap in the comments sections about getting all the IB claimants off IB [even though they have not done anything wrong except be ill, being ill isn't a crime yet is it?] probably have no experience of having a disability/long term sickness at all. It also seems to these readers of these papers that if you are on benefits that you can not have some sort of social life or existence as well.

I have been writing for the last few months about my experience of brain injury, access to services, trying to get a job and experience of being on IB. It all came together 2 weeks ago with a session with a social work lecturer and a group of second year students at a university in the Midlands.

I was nervous before I went to the university and I had the same feeling you get when you go to the dentist and you are sitting in the waiting area and you can hear the drill in the background.

The lecturer explained to the students what the session was about and then what I was doing there and that I have a good few years experience of disability and the benefits system. The session was titled "Life inside the brown envelope from hell" I thought that bit up, clever eh?.

It was the first time I had done this type of thing and I did not realise beforehand that I was going to be doing most of the talking, it actually got very difficult trying to think what was in my head and then to actually say what I wanted to say. I think I surprised the students with some of my thoughts, the students asked me some very good questions as well. One of the students said that people should be able to manage there condition first without all the added pressure of trying to find work as all the extra pressure doesn't help your condition. just read some of the difficulties people have on the benefitsandwork forum to show what effects it has on peoples conditions.

If you are ill you know yourself when you are ready to try to go to work. When you do try to go to work then you find the other obstacles and blind alleys, getting your hopes up and then coming down again with bump.

It also makes me angry that every 18 months or so I have to go through the same old shit filling in the forms and having to prove that I am not well and my brain isn't going to get any better and I have had to adapt to it. Even though there is a track record from day one of my accident from hospitals/consultants/GPs I have to go through this process over and over again and it is draining.

I would love one of these hard working taxpayers or so they claim who write all there crap in the sun and the mail to take my place for a week. For one f***ing day just to be me again, they would soon change there mind.

I do love the recent benefits cheats adverts that were on tv recently, its typical how the people shown are the typical stereotyped type of people like the guy getting his cash in hand and looking unkempt. Also how do you expect them to be taken seriously when the guy who does the voiceover also does adverts for birds eye frozen products for a £1?.

Even though I don't think the No.10 petition site actually achieves anything I think this petition is well worth signing after what I wrote in my blog last time which is along the same subject:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/MumsAtHome/

Till next time

Brainblogger

Politicians

Having recovered from the brown envelope from hell and the next door neighbour trying to run me over I thought its about time I did something on my blog.

The DWP letter said I will not be assessed for another 5 years [allegedly] I am still afraid. I worry about what going to happen next. I just try to go from one day to the other and see what happens next.

Just lately I have been doing quite a bit of writing. I am helping a lecturer in social work at a university who contacted me, all voluntary of course. I have been writing about my experience of having a brain injury, the correct description is actually I have very severe cranio-cerebral injury with clear evidence of damage to the frontal and temporal regions of my brain.

I am writing what it is like waking up after being in a coma, how I felt and how I feel now, peoples attitudes to a hidden disability like when I go out and about and the "Does he take sugar?" effect when you try to conduct your daily business, you know like how difficult it can be when you try to do something simple like order a couple of meals in a pub, you know when your brain knows what you want to say but you can't get it all out how you want and the person taking the order thinks you are a bit of a simpleton, then there are people tutting behind you because you are a bit slow and then trying to deal with all the multiple noises around as well, it can be very difficult.

Would it have made a difference to my recovery if I could of gone to a rehab centre sooner, rather than have to wait five years, the inadequacies of case management that charge £35-£40 an hour and then later withdraw there support because they are not making a profit from you and how when you went to the appointment they kept looking at the clock to make sure you stayed the full hour, how you can't get to see a social worker face to face now like I used to who helped me, going on schemes setup by the jobcentre that don't help, the brown envelopes from hell, medicals, ideally it is to help the students understand what it is really like for someone being in this position.

I have a date for next year when it is to be presented which at the way things are going it will soon be here. I am looking forward to it but it sounds daunting so I am going to build myself up to it. When I contact the lecturer and show what I have written I keep getting more ideas so I have to write them in. I have also dug up a lot of old paperwork and I keep finding things that I now want to write in as well.

Just lately the government and the opposition are both been ranting on about getting the scroungers, no I mean the disabled/sick people and unemployed back into work, but with the banking crisis and possible recession jobs are scarce let alone jobs for disabled people as well. James Purnell could not have picked a worse time to bring in the ESA. Where are all the jobs for disabled going to come from and who's going to pay for all this support?

They are also going on about giving disabled people all this support, what support?, in my experience so far the support stopped as soon as they got me the voluntary work placement. Where will the support end? Will it end as soon as they have got you into a job and off the ESA? Will they provide support for you once you in your job?.

The conservatives have been going on about including the 3 strikes and you are out for people on IB as well as the unemployed if you refuse a reasonable job offer. I have applied for jobs but I haven't had 3 reasonable job offers yet. Its a miracle even to got a reply to say that you haven't even get an interview. Getting a job offer would be a miracle in itself.

I have read a letter from 1994 from an employment & rehabilitation consultant to my solicitor which said because of the level of my injury I would not have been even considered for sheltered employment [places like Remploy, a Remploy manager has to run his factory at a cost effective basis, therefore when a vacancy does arise the Remploy manager is likely to chose the most profiecent worker and not the slowest] and that there would have been many more suitable candidates. Whether this has changed now I do not know.

It was considered that I had no current earnings prospects and would not be placeable in the open labour market.

Also in the same letter it said relating to the DEA and disability services of the DWP that it was now common practice for the disability services to take no action whilst a person is in continuing receipt of Invalidity Benefit [which is now IB].

If this was happening in 1994 and that I was just considered a lost cause then what if it this applies to all the other people that were on IB then it is no wonder there is 2.6 million people on IB. It seems that what the government and future governments are trying to do now is shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. They are not going to find it so easy as they make out.

When I was talking to the lecturer I said was is it just me but when I see disabled people at work they are doing the things I have mentioned before in my blog like the sweeping litter in shopping centres or push trolleys in DIY store and she agreed with me. It is not just me who thinks that.

People also fail to realise that disabled people actually want to make a future for themselves as well and have prospects and will not just take any job. There are things to consider like having enough money to pay the bills, have enough food to eat. have enough money to survive on from day to day. We are all allowed our own dreams for what sort of future we want and not just do what the ministers think we should do.