Are you made to feel guilty for claiming benefits?

jennie-jack

its AWFUL WHEN you not only have to live with a disability but to then justify it to the world. when my oldest son was little i didnt know anything about dla and it was a friend who suggested that we apply for it seems as we had a tube fed child who vomitted around the clock and needed meds. she was surprised that we hadnt been told about it.

we got high rate care for him and we had one or two comments about how we got paid to look after our own child. my sister thought thAT high rate was for children seriously ill so was under then impression that we must have lied on the form andc that life wasnt that hard. she sadly got her own introduction to dla when her first daughter was also tube fed and she realised just what work we had to do.

people will alwaya have some comment, we got well its ok for you you have lots of money coming in. which would be ok if we didnt spend half the time in a hospital, spend a fortune driving around the country for hospital appointments and have tube feeds running from 4 am until the following 1 am. i would gladly swop.

dark_lady

CRH71 wrote: »

Being the partner of one with disability, I have followed this thread with interest.


What really does shock me on this type of forum is the fact that DLA, and disability benefits in general, are the ones tarred with the "scrounger" brush (based on a few idiots blatantly abusing the system and the media over-hyping things and enticing hatred and discrimination) and it is almost socially-unacceptable to be in receipt of disability benefits, yet it is seemingly perfectly socially-acceptable to be in receipt of Child Benefit, or Working Tax Credits? Do these benefits not come from the same "pot"? To my eyes they do, so why is DLA "scrounging", yet WTC "acceptable"?

This is a very excellent point and one i made as well in DT on the thread "Lets vilify the Sick and Disabled" I made this point after two single parents had made similar derogatory comments about disability benefit claimants. One of them who goes by the user name Fiver69 replied....Well im not pretending to have children so i can claim. Im ENTITLED to the Child Benefit.
What people like this cant seem to fathom is that having children is a choice. Being ill or disabled isnt!

jetta_wales

dark_lady wrote: »

This is a very excellent point and one i made as well in DT on the thread "Lets vilify the Sick and Disabled" I made this point after two single parents had made similar derogatory comments about disability benefit claimants. One of them who goes by the user name Fiver69 replied....Well im not pretending to have children so i can claim. Im ENTITLED to the Child Benefit.
What people like this cant seem to fathom is that having children is a choice. Being ill or disabled isnt!

What's DT?

dark_lady

On another thread Fiver said couples who sleep apart do not have a normal relationship.
My husband and i sleep apart due to his disabilities because whenever he went into spasm i used to get kicked in the spine. We also have a sexless relationship due to his disabilities which i sometimes get depressed about but i didnt bother to reply on that thread. I didnt see the point when i was faced with such ignorance.
And i wasnt sure that she would understand the concept of "in sickness and in health" a marriage vow i took and intend to keep.

dark_lady

DT stands for Discussion Time Jetta.

The_mangler

My husband is in pieces lately with the victimisation of disabled people on benefits, we have just come through a fraud investigation which left us both thoroughly wrung out and him on antipsychotics, and now he is waiting for the letter to come stating he is to be reassessed for Incapacity. He is a clever man, a former Works Manager at a very young age but Bipolar and Fibromyalgia put paid to his career. It breaks my heart to see him as the shadow of the man I married, scared to leave the house and closing all the curtains and blinds in case he is being filmed or watched again.

I know he would gladly give away his benefits if only they would take away his illnesses too


PS. The malicious fraud reported about us - 10 months of waiting since the IUC, numerous letters and appeals, several wrongly calculated amounts, excess credit card payments because all our money was stopped for three months and we have just been told that actually we were right all along. No apology, no compensation and a husband with raging paranoia, psychosis and raised cholesterol and BP due to the meds. All because of a neighbour's jealousy. I despair at human nature

Sueinbirmingham

I'm always terrified of other people's jealousy. Of course, there's the standard response "you're welcome to my money if you'll have my disability with it" but that's not always as effective as I'd like.

Sometimes online I get the inevitable comments that if I can post messages online, I can work. The funny thing is that I rarely get comments like "you haven't been posting here for a while - you wouldn't be able to work if you need to take that amount of time out when you're ill".

As someone who experiences distressing paranoia, it really doesn't help to be attacked by people, whether they're strangers or people I know, who aren't walking in my shoes.

Not long ago, I had some friends round. They are all middle-aged - old. They are a bunch of successful people. Something in me snapped and I found myself crying and saying how out of place I felt as someone who was such a failure. They reminded me that it's not my fault that I'm ill and that I still have something to give, even if it's not paid work.

It seemed such a rare and precious thing for there to be people out there who knew me and respected me and accepted me for what I am despite being unable to work. I spend a lot of time on the internet and it seems that everywhere I go there is someone determined to have a go at people like me.

Some are trolls and enjoy causing distress, but more worryingly, a lot are just ordinary people stirred up into jealousy and hostility by a steady stream of government press releases, media articles and television programmes. Somehow I have to withstand this barrage of propaganda even though my mental health is such that it is a major triumph just to cope with the basics of life.

It's not surprising that some people are going under.

dark_lady

The_mangler wrote: »

My husband is in pieces lately with the victimisation of disabled people on benefits, we have just come through a fraud investigation which left us both thoroughly wrung out and him on antipsychotics, and now he is waiting for the letter to come stating he is to be reassessed for Incapacity. He is a clever man, a former Works Manager at a very young age but Bipolar and Fibromyalgia put paid to his career. It breaks my heart to see him as the shadow of the man I married, scared to leave the house and closing all the curtains and blinds in case he is being filmed or watched again.

I know he would gladly give away his benefits if only they would take away his illnesses too


PS. The malicious fraud reported about us - 10 months of waiting since the IUC, numerous letters and appeals, several wrongly calculated amounts, excess credit card payments because all our money was stopped for three months and we have just been told that actually we were right all along. No apology, no compensation and a husband with raging paranoia, psychosis and raised cholesterol and BP due to the meds. All because of a neighbour's jealousy. I despair at human nature

Oh the Mangler i am so sorry for what you and your hubby went through. I really hope karma visits the evil specimen who lied to DWP about your circumstances. I send you virtual hugs and best wishes.xx

marleyboy

Worked all my life, now I am at home looking after our disabled Son, Mrs has gone back to work whilst I am on carers allowance. I have NO intentions of staying unemployed, I sympathise with OP as there is nothing worse than staring at the same walls all day long, I avoid daytime television like the plague, if anything I think its one of the main reasons I went to work in the first place .

I certainly do not give a toss what others think about my situation, I have paid my NI contributions MORE than enough to cover this gap between jobs, there is nothing worse then finding yourself becoming a recluse in your own home.

At my age, finding work is going to be an uphill struggle, but the sooner I am able to get back into work, where I can socialize as well as escape the benefits trap, the better.

Try not to listen to ignorance, from people who judge without knowing the facts. I would question some weird old man asking me whether I work, probably physically. I would be more interested to know if he was working, be that he spends so much time wandering the streets looking for victims he thinks he can persecute. Maybe he was touting for business, you should have replied with; "Sorry mate, even I have limits and besides, you couldn't afford me!".

Mupette

MoneySaverForever wrote: »

Hi all, I think many of you will know what I'm talking about because I've been made to feel very guilty by one or two people over the last few months ever since I started to claim benefits and it's not a nice feeling at all. I don't like how they talk down to you or make out that they're somehow "better" than you because they work or don't claim benefits like you do. I've always worked but I can't work right now because I'm very ill and I sometimes feel like just giving up but I know I have to keep fighting no matter what. I doesn't help that people judge me without really knowing me and I even had one horrible man ask me if I had a job when I was at the shops the other day and when I said I wasn't working right now, he remarked that I was very lazy and should be ashamed, a young girl like me. So unfair

I'm sorry if my post doesn't make much sense but I hope it does xxx

yes loads of people on this forum like to make you feel like scum because you can't work, it is sad that they are that sad.