I have an ESA50 form due by the 31st of October. This is to continue qualifying for Employment and Support Allowance benefit in the UK, the benefit that is given to people who are too ill to work. Because I was working before I fell ill, mine is called 'Contribution based', since there were contributions taken out of my paycheck all along for this purpose.
There's another form called Income based which is for people who weren't working before they were ill, but have low income. If you qualify for this, you get signposted onto other benefits that the Contribution based people don't get. I don't understand it. It's as if I'd be financially better off now if I'd been unemployed when I got sick.
So I sat up working on the form for about an hour, writing about how my illness affects me. I'm nowhere near done. Then I went to bed about 7pm and couldn't get up until 2pm. When I did get up, the world was swimming and everything hurt and all I wanted to do was go back to bed.
How do I prove I'm too ill to work, when I'm too ill to fill out the form?
"You know this is the way it is. You were born, and so are subject to change, disease, and ultimately death. It happens differently for each person. This is one of the ways it's happening to you." - Toni Bernhard
"Our life is always all right. There's nothing wrong with it. Even if we have horrendous problems, it's just our life." - Charlotte Joko Beck
Hi, I followed your name from Dave Hingsburgers blog as I was impressed by your comment about the walled garden.
ReplyDeleteI'm recommending to everyone who is getting this form not to fill it in themselves but to go to one of the CAB's or Advice Work services that have been left following the cuts.
Not only are the forms too long and humilating the Govt are looking for excuses to remove people from benefit.
Hope that doesn't make me too much of a stalker lol
I've done that before, but being strangers and trying to speak to them and interact with them is so tiring. Speaking by itself exhausts me, compared to writing, and I've got a really good guide from http://benefitsandwork.co.uk to help me, so I'm not worried about doing it wrong. It's probably good advice for most people to use CAB, as their services really are helpful. It just happens that my disability isn't really conducive to using an advice service.
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting! I don't consider it stalking at all. :)