h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am going to have an informal chat next week to a couple of people about some supportive employment.

It is part time 2 days a week and a couple of hours paid training. I was so excited at this prospect but tempered with a haunting thought that the hours would not be enough to pay the rent and bills.

In the worst case scenario I don't appear to be worse off but it is tight, I am going to ask about transport costs as my support worker said they could help with that and it would make a big difference as everything is so marginal

In the best case scenario I could be substantially better off which would be fab but call me pessimistic if you must I am working on the worst case beause that is how things generally work for me.

This is ok, this more than ok, I just so want to work, to get back to a normal life of which work is a really important part, not just for the money for me.

So the placement isn't a dead cert but it is within my grasp and I wanted to grab for it and I can and that has made me very happy.

On paperwork I am just chucking it in here.

Huge issue for me at anytime but pretty impossible when I am at my most ill periods. Over the last two years this has huge ramifications but none more so that finding out I had been apparently over-paid tax credits.

I haven't, I just dropped the ball when it came to a crucial piece of paperwork that just passed me by during a very ill period. I have missed the appeal date and now that means it doesn't matter that I was entitled to the benefit I still have to pay it back.

It is a lot of money £3000, I don't think even covers that.

Anyway CAB have been helping with my paperwork and I have been to a debt charity called Step Change. If anyone is worried about debt or overwhelmed please do look at Step Change

http://www.stepchange.org/?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=270049&WT.seg_1=step%20change&gclid=CJ-CwYbvs8QCFRMatAodKBIAPw

I can stop things from getting worse. So already feel that I have more control over the situation. Which is quite empowering.

They have done the calculations for me and as things stand they suggest an amount of £1 a month is what I can reasonably afford to pay back.

It is not funny but I laughed that will only take 250 years to pay off then

I accept that I have to pay it back no matter how unjust that is and that arrangement is no more than they deserve really somehow suitably fitting.

In reality it is a temporary arrangement and they might not accept but then I have just politely send them my budgets and ask them what do they expect me to do, the words were my income is pitiful, I have no assets, there just isn't anyway I can pay this off in a meaningful sense and can only make a token gesture.

If my circumstances change (see OP) then I can renegotiate to perhaps a £1 a week

It is not a funny situation at all, it nearly pushed me over the edge but you get your laughs where you can in these circumstance

with all this.



I could tell you some horror stories about benefits and other stuff like the CSA hassle with my youngest's father (I never saw a penny of that eventual-£5 a week) and I had one success story where I took on the DSS and WON my appeal.

I gave up my car last year through not being able to afford the running costs anymore, but the bus fares to Mum's and back (whom I care for) are costing me the same as the petrol was and I don't always have the energy to walk (I have just recovered from a bout of shingles, brought on by stress) I have asked all the agencies if I can have help with transport costs and been turned down every time. I am too young according to the council. (I don't get a pension until I am 66, but then I will lose the Carer's Allowance, so if Mum is still alive then, what am I supposed to do?) I'm almost 60, Mum is 95.

GB

Hi GB,

Thank you for the and posting to my journal

Makes me that you struggle with transport costs, it is not on and neither was giving up your car.

Shingles is very nasty, I feel for you, the underlying causes of that stress, getting run down etc have a huge impact on health and carers in my experience do not have the time, space and means to look after and properly care for, nurture and prioritise themselves.

I think you should get more help from society and perhaps also your family should be chucking in bus fares, I certainly hope that you are not paying for taxis and that, should you need them to enable to meet your caring obligations.

That's not happened yet, needing taxis, but if I got a call in the middle of the night (I'm first call, if her carelink bracelet goes off) I would phone a taxi and back and get a receipt, present it to my brother for reimbursement! I don't think they thought of me not being able to run Mum about when I asked for help last year.

Can´t say much, just wish you strength to keep on fighting.

I don't what they were thinking about the car, GB,I know I was very cross about it, it was not an optional extra but necessity.

Thank you Maria for the and the strength to keep fighting. It is good to see you here to my friend How are things going you way?

Crikey well I started at 9am, it is now 4.30pm, so a full days paperwork and phoning there.

Mostly because I had phoned everyone to offer them £1 a month but then the post arrived with a new benefit award, so had start again with new figures but better ones. I'm now down to paying of the tax credits in 100 years but the other 2 I could have done in six months

The newly arrived benefit is good also with regard to the OP of how much better off I would be in work

honestly I think there is a huge flaw in the tax credit system I know far too many people who have had problems with it especially with sudden 'over payments' which they are then left frightened and confused about oh for compitent caring government staff...

on the job thing!

Hi Anthea

Hi Anthea Thanks for the .

The tax credits are flawed, especially with the overpayments, I guess a system like that is very blunt and it does need sorting

That said I know a lot of people who were on the breadline in work and the introduction of tax credits meant that were lifted above that level and it gave them a lot of security and a big improvement in the quality of their lives.

That and the minimum wage was one of the good things that came from the labour government at the time and it is now so engrained this one really hasn't been able to take it away.

How you doing with your training?

Peanut, DG and I are thinking of you and praying that this opportunity works out for you. Both you and Galaxy Babe are both courageous fighting illness and bureaucracy at the same time!

Thank you Elektra and DG for the and for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers

I am all nervous and excited about Tuesday, I really hope I can get a placement, what also feels really good, if I don't, I'll be disappointed but there will be others, feels like a good normative response to be confident to deal with a no, as well as a yes

Yes! I'm rooting for you, sweetie luv!!

Keep us in touch!

And if you don't get the placement, as you say, there will be others. And you're on a new part of your journey, in fact you're waaay out on that track now!!

(sets up wayside cafe for passing travellers) Tea? Brandy?

Hello CC Darling

Thank you for rooting for me and for the wayside café along the track, along with the and brandy , perhaps some of Clives pies, which I have yet to sample. Will be keeping my eye out for them in Glastonbury



It feels good to be on this new track and to able to take a pause to enjoy the new view

Oh, that was an unexpected jolt of disappointment, there will be no appointment tomorrow because there is no job or placements, not just that one but no new ones at all.

The back story behind that can only be that there funding and financial issues and that makes me wince and not for myself.

So, oh bugger,

A pick me up Perculiar , served up at the wayside cafe and I'll get back on my way,

a pie would go down a treat though,

*wonders what a pot luck evening could be like at the wayside café*

What??? It isn't going to happen? Oh, darlin'.

OK, well, here at the wayside cafe we believe in the journey anyway, even though things can take a strange turn.

So, here's a pie, and a cry, a feel better, a brandy and a kiss and a watchful gaze at the big starry universe and see where all these stars are taking us.

Thanks CC

I am really liking the wayside café

I am thinking positive but there is a lag in feeling that, I think it will get better a little later because this isn't the morning that as planned.

I have an appointment with my support worker instead and then the picture will be clearer, yep I am disappointed with what has happened but if that was bout one opportunity then I would be pretty much over that.

It is the fact that there won't be any others and how hard a hit has all of the other support services they offer has been. Because if those have gone or might be not be in there in the next months then that is a bigger issue for me.

I wasn't depending on that one placement but I was depending on the whole package they were offering.

I am going to make an appointment with my disability adviser at the job centre just to discuss what other options there are as this was the best one for me *given what they were offering* but not the only one so it would be good to revisit those other routes into work

, shower, then off

Aw Peanut I'm really sorry it hasn't panned out! But I really hope there are still many other options to try ...

Thanks Maria and Willem

Well yesterday was awful, no need to be concerned about me, my friends, how perverse given the setting of employment support I consider myself to be lucky to have 'lost' a job I never had.

It was worse than I expected, no new placements or jobs was a bad sign but I had thought that at least everyone already on a placement or in a job would be able to complete theirs.

That is not the case, the big factory site is closing unexpectedly and quickly, everyone has four weeks notice. This had an engineering works, a print works and jobs that hung off that base, delivery, PAT testing, maintianence and admin etc. There was a training room where we meet for sessions on job searching and support.

Losing your job is a horrible, horrible thing, a kick in the guts,
I was not on the factory site yesterday but in other offices the shock and disbelief there was palpable enough.

My heart was so heavy for everyone and I came away feeling sickened for them and by the blow that they have suffered at the coal face of austerity cuts

What cruelty, I don't think is a too strong a word given the vulnerabilities of the of a good proportion of that work force and the different type of relationships within that. Yes you are someone boss, supervisor, team leader but also a supporter, receiving such news is terrible enough, imagine having to deliver that also to your workforce. So yeah, all round, cruel I think.