Complications with Disability Travel Passes

I have been using a concessionary travel pass since, if I recall, late 2008. I had got my current job perhaps a year earlier through a scheme for people with disabilities. We’ll call them The Scheme. A worker from The Scheme helped me to apply for said travel pass. Now, this was maybe a year before I got a solid diagnosis for short-term memory difficulties. I did have a psych assessment at the time, but it was totally inaccurate, claiming I had dyslexia. (That’s for another blog post.) As mentioned in a post a few months ago, employment mentor JM had noticed that this was totally inaccurate, and that my condition was memory-related, and likely from an Acquired Brain Injury. I needed to be reassessed.

While I was badgering my (weirdly reluctant) GP to send me to a psychologist, JM helped me to apply for a concessionary bus pass from Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM). Despite not having a solid diagnosis, I was awarded a bus pass with minimal complications.

I used said bus pass throughout all the tribulations of moving offices numerous times, having to learn everything again repeatedly, eventually getting a diagnosis and assistance from Neuropsychology, battling through Social Care (the worker didn’t want anything to do with me as my problems were memory-related, not a generalised learning difficulty or autism), applying for Disability Living Allowance, first through Social Care, which was a waste of time, then through The Scheme, which was by then being administered by another organisation.

Confused? Me too.

You’re probably aware that a few years ago DLA was replaced with Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a benefit that- for most disabled people like myself- required an assessment from ATOS, a private company. I’m not going to bang on about this right now, as this blog post is about something different to that, but essentially, throughout all the hoops the government forced me to jump through to prove that neither myself nor the neuropsychologist who assessed me were lying and that I had the disability I said I had, one thing stayed constant: my bus pass.

I never had a problem renewing this every few years… until this year.

My bus pass expired at the end of last month. Normally, TfGM sent me a reminder of sorts, and maybe I gave them a new picture. I can’t remember. But there was minimal complication with it. I think maybe I had to get my parents’ neighbour- a Regional Manager in his trade and who had lived next to me since I was maybe 7 years old- to confirm I was who I said I was. (Like you do with a passport photo.)

But this year, there was no reminder. The pass expired, so I emailed TfGM to ask what I needed to do. No response. I emailed again. Same. I phoned. I was on hold 10 minutes or so.

I eventually got through to a worker. They told me that I need to be applying under the Learning Disability Team at my local authority. They had checked, and I’m not known to that team, so the pass wasn’t renewed. This appears to be new criteria.

Now. I’m reluctant to talk about work, but at the moment I work, as it happens, a few desks down from the LD team that deal with concessionary bus passes.

That team were somewhat surprised to find out that I have any condition at all. I’m 39 now, and have spent my life trying to fit in, and not let my condition get in the way of life- but it still does in many ways. That said, I’ve become so adept at hiding the condition- writing desk maps so I can remember people’s names, having massive quantities of guide notes on how to do everything I need to, having my diary open on my desk so I know which days I’m in- that many people are unaware that I live with a disability.

A member of that team, who deals with the bus passes, explained to me that the process had been ‘shortened,’ that some changes had been made. I’ll skim over the bureaucracy. She gave me a copy of the application form. I’ve filled it, but the only passport photo (required as an attachment) that I can find is seemingly from 2008, and appears to be the same one I’ve been using on my bus pass since then.

I updated my driving licence this year with a considerably newer picture, but even that one is a few years old. I can’t find any originals of that picture right now. (A head-trauma / memory condition symptom is not being able to find specific things in specific places. This is far more noticeable than with the average person.) So, paperclipped into my diary is the application form and the suspiciously old photo of me, with no stubble or, dare I say it, wrinkles. I’ll sort it out on Monday. Next Saturday, I’ll tell you where I’m at.