Parkinsons and benefits?

iwantalife

Hi Guys,
My work colleague has Parkinsons. I have worked alongside him 5 years. in these 5 years I have seen the decline in his health. He started his role as an order picker, and when diagnosed 8 years ago they gave him an office based role but left him on his order picker wage (£1 an hour more)
Anyhow this past 12 months has been terrible for him. He had his licence removed Jan 2016. He had surgery Sept 2016. He came back to work after 10 weeks recovery. No sooner had he got back to work they dropped his money to clerical rate, can they do this after being on the higher rate for so long? The surgery has not been as successful as hoped, infact some days he is worse than ever, shuffling his feet a couple of inches to get to his seat. I had a heart to heart with him and he told me he feels work is too much for him but he is stuck as he is not entitled to any financial help and does not want to be a financial burden on his partner. Surely he is entitled to something? Please can somebody tell me if he is and what so that I can advise him as I hate the thought of him feeling trapped, he is 61 and has worked all his life so I feel he deserves to be entitled to some help. I can see the depresion building in him. Thank you in advance

teddysmum

iwantalife wrote: »

Hi Guys,
My work colleague has Parkinsons. I have worked alongside him 5 years. in these 5 years I have seen the decline in his health. He started his role as an order picker, and when diagnosed 8 years ago they gave him an office based role but left him on his order picker wage (£1 an hour more)
Anyhow this past 12 months has been terrible for him. He had his licence removed Jan 2016. He had surgery Sept 2016. He came back to work after 10 weeks recovery. No sooner had he got back to work they dropped his money to clerical rate, can they do this after being on the higher rate for so long? The surgery has not been as successful as hoped, infact some days he is worse than ever, shuffling his feet a couple of inches to get to his seat. I had a heart to heart with him and he told me he feels work is too much for him but he is stuck as he is not entitled to any financial help and does not want to be a financial burden on his partner. Surely he is entitled to something? Please can somebody tell me if he is and what so that I can advise him as I hate the thought of him feeling trapped, he is 61 and has worked all his life so I feel he deserves to be entitled to some help. I can see the depresion building in him. Thank you in advance

He could get PIP if he has care needs.


My father had Parkinson's but in his 70s, so had AA instead. This was the higher rate as he had incontinence problems, as well as being unable to bath himself or cook a meal and had daily carers come in.

bigbulldog

Get him to look into Parkinson's uk charity as there local monthly meetings with other sufferers.

https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/

He could also get mobility side of PIP as well.

rockingbilly

Having a diagnosis means nothing both for PIP and AA. Both benefits look at the persons needs for attention or supervision (AA) and for PIP you have to fit exactly one of the descriptors and then add up the scores you get. PIP is a very narrow based assessment. There are many that suffer from difficult and painful conditions but because of the way it is assessed (using descriptors) they cannot get any award. I had a friend who recently died from Motor Neuro disease at age 58. His wife tried a couple of times over the past 2/3 years to claim PIP for him but failed each time. She never appealed as it would have been impossible to get my friend to a Tribunal

bigbulldog

rockingbilly wrote: »

Having a diagnosis means nothing both for PIP and AA. Both benefits look at the persons needs for attention or supervision (AA) and for PIP you have to fit exactly one of the descriptors and then add up the scores you get. PIP is a very narrow based assessment. There are many that suffer from difficult and painful conditions but because of the way it is assessed (using descriptors) they cannot get any award. I had a friend who recently died from Motor Neuro disease at age 58. His wife tried a couple of times over the past 2/3 years to claim PIP for him but failed each time. She never appealed as it would have been impossible to get my friend to a Tribunal

Ignore the negative posters and try and think of the positives.

However

There are many that DO get the award as it is not difficult to fit the descriptors due to the symptoms of Parkinson's disease .

rockingbilly

bigbulldog wrote: »

Ignore the negative posters and try and think of the positives.

However

There are many that DO get the award as it is not difficult to fit the descriptors due to the symptoms of Parkinson's disease .

Absolutely, but then it all depends on how good you are at completing the 40 page PIP claim form, how willing you are to bare your soul to a stranger in getting help to fill it in, how able you are to put over how your life is affected when having the F2F assessment and finally how good and how much care the assessor uses in compiling their report. It took me nearly 10 years to pluck up enough courage to ask for help. In those 10 years I probably had 4/5 DLA claim forms sent to me but could not face getting beyond the first 2/3 pages so never filled them in or returned them.

nannytone_2

rockingbilly wrote: »

Absolutely, but then it all depends on how good you are at completing the 40 page PIP claim form, how willing you are to bare your soul to a stranger in getting help to fill it in, how able you are to put over how your life is affected when having the F2F assessment and finally how good and how much care the assessor uses in compiling their report. It took me nearly 10 years to pluck up enough courage to ask for help. In those 10 years I probably had 4/5 DLA claim forms sent to me but could not face getting beyond the first 2/3 pages so never filled them in or returned them.

then that is the choice you make.
how much you need the financial help versus how much you want to open up your personal situation to others.

welfare rights/CAB/DIAL etc are all well versed in the information required for a successful claim.
they know what information is relevant and what is superfluous.
they know what questions to ask and will not pry necessarily.

rockingbilly

nannytone wrote: »

then that is the choice you make.
how much you need the financial help versus how much you want to open up your personal situation to others.

welfare rights/CAB/DIAL etc are all well versed in the information required for a successful claim.
they know what information is relevant and what is superfluous.
they know what questions to ask and will not pry necessarily.

As I said it took me 10 years to pluck up the courage to make a DLA claim. It has also taken years for me to pluck up the courage to ask for help from Social Services - I did the deed last week and within days all manner of equipment arrived + they are coming out next week to assess me. I am a very proud and easily embarrassed person and do not like to inflict my problems on others. On reflection I'll do my own thing and carry on dealing with the DWP by myself.

iwantalife

that is awful, so very sad

iwantalife

i have advised him to seek help from the CAB as i thought they would know what help he would be entitled to or not.