My 12-month transitional protection has ended, and I’m now only on my part time admin wage and the smaller low-rate mobility element of PIP. I am no longer eligible for free prescriptions, eye tests or dental treatment, which will be a bastard in summer when I need hayfever meds, but at least I kicked antidepressants.
So what I'll save by not needing certain meds, I'll have to now pay out for other routine checkups.
It’s still fucked.
It does, however, mean that I can get paid for any additional hours in work, as opposed to needing to take them off in TOIL.
I was also unsuccessful in getting a disabled person’s bus pass. I’d been claiming that, legitimately, from 2008 to 2021, when Transport for Greater Manchester decided I was no longer disabled enough. The update at the time was that these passes were now only being handed out to people who were under the Learning Disability team in the local authority.
I was under them, briefly, in 2010-2011, but I had to file a complaint against the social worker for negligence and was taken out of her care. But that’s another story.
I did a bit of asking around. It seems the requirement for people to be actual LD patients in social care was introduced because professionals were filling out forms for people ‘willy-nilly’ as one professional told me. So they had to put in some stipulations.
The weird thing is, when I first got mine in ‘08, I wasn’t even properly diagnosed. I’d only just found out I’d been misdiagnosed, and that I needed a new assessment. They hadn’t even asked for the medical information; they’d just seemingly taken my employment mentor’s word for it.
More recently, I got a little clarity on this. The Bee Network took over First Buses in March this year. their routes were and still are operating in Oldham and Manchester. TfGM oversees all of this. One of the new rules for administering travel passes: ‘Would be refused a driving licence on the grounds of: severe enduring mental health; epilepsy, or giddiness and fainting; sight problems; other.’ Otherwise, and applicant would now need ‘a neurological development condition including ADHD, autism or other related conditions that would result in the refusal of a driving licence.’
It might be worth me booking a Citizen’s Advice appointment just to see whether there’s anything I’m just not aware of. After all, that’s how I’d found out about Transitional Protection in the first place. It’s also how, some years prior to that, I got back on Working Tax Credits after a) being booted off and b) being chased by debt collectors, for HMRC’s own mistakes.
I’ll probably update on this in a couple of weeks. There is a lot going on in terms of memory, confidence, the new government, cooking, etc. etc. All of this will appear here as part of #psychologysaturday.
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