Hi, my name is martinpaton! — Scope | Disability forum
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Hi, my name is martinpaton!

martinpaton
martinpaton Community member Posts: 3 Listener
My family and I are having a very bad time of things recently. My wife has Diabetes and can hardly walk, our house was not suitable for adaption so we were forced to move in september. The housing association told us we had a weekend to move in! We are both disabled. In the middle of the move we got a letter saying my DLA which I had been awarded for life (full mobility and medium care) was being changed and I had to apply for PIP. Really good timing we could not find any records and had no doctors. I had to do the best I could hoping that by the time they questioned the doctors I would have had my records transferred to a new one.


December 10th my son has a breakdown and ends up in a mental hospital, December 12th I have my assessment by Capita. I arrive slightly late having got lost, I can hardly stand and am giddy. I have the assessment, go to leave but am so unsteady on my feet the receptionist will not let me leave. When I do finally leave it takes me 4 hours to get back to my car, and I have collapsed into a cafe and had to be looked after until I was fit enough to walk

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December 15th my wifes birthday, my daughter and son and her daughter sneak down from the midlands to suprise her and we all meet at the mental institute with my other son. Lovely day we had to leave the youngest son at the hospital but went to our house with the others and had a good time. About midnight we get a message to say that they are home safe.
Next morning we get an urgent call saying our grandson (who lives with us) is sick and we need to get him from school. So by lunch time we are home and the phone rings, our granddaughter is screaming down the phone, her step dad has murdered her mum, tried to kill her brother and then killed himself.

Our oldest grandson was in a terrible way nose severed, smashed eye socket, fractured skull needed 200 stitches to put him back together, AND he had been shot in the back of the head twice with a nail gun. He needed 8 hours of surgery to put him back together. Our daughter had 5 children in all the youngest turned 4 the week after. Trying to tell her and her 7 year old brother what had happened was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

In the middle of all this grief we got a letter saying I did not even get a single point on my claim for PIP, meaning I would lose our car and a large chunk of money. I of course asked them to look again (and was informed they could look at the DLA claim for medical evidence, but they never contact your doctors etc anymore). Again I failed.

Since then we have been hit again, the TAX Office have decided that I do not work enough towards making a profit so cannot be classed as self employed so have taken away our working tax credits and our child tax credits, they also want us to repay £11,000 from the last year

Comments

  • Liam_Alumni
    Liam_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 1,101 Pioneering
    Hi @martinpaton,

    Welcome to Scope's online community.

    I'm so very sorry to hear about what you've been through - it sounds like a really tough time. Are you getting any outside support? 

    You can also give our Helpline team a call on 0808 800 3333 or email helpline@scope.org.uk, where one of our advisors may be able to offer you further advice and support.

    If you have any other questions, then please do get in touch.
    Liam
  • Matilda
    Matilda Community member Posts: 2,593 Disability Gamechanger
    @martinpaton

    You might want to re-post in Ask a benefits advisor category.
  • Sam_Alumni
    Sam_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 7,671 Disability Gamechanger
    Hi @martinpaton what an awful time you have had, have you or your family had any emotional support to deal with this?
    Scope
    Senior online community officer
  • martinpaton
    martinpaton Community member Posts: 3 Listener
    Emotional support? We have victim support but they havent done much, and I have a CPN because I have been having panic attacks (feels like a heart attack) managed to have one during the funeral. Otherwise we have been on our own.
    What I did not mention is that we both got hospitalized in the first month, my wife because she had an infected ulcer on her toe (thought they were going to have to amputate) and me because of the panic attacks.

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