Chris encourages others to press for their rights around benefits.
Hi It’s Chris Maddocks here. I’m in England again as tomorrow I am going to the All Party Parliamentary Group about Dementia. I am going to a report that looks into dementia and disability. This all stems from the fact that when I was diagnosed with Early Onset Vascular Dementia I wasn’t made welcome back in to the workplace and they didn’t make any reasonable adjustments for me. I just wanted to give people some tips who may be going through the same sort of thing because I went through a really difficult time and ended up losing my job.
When I went back to work I couldn’t remember how to access my computer and my emails and this was something that I had been doing for, you know, day in, day out. I would be shown and half an hour later and I would forget again. When I went back to work they didn’t have anything suitable to put me on, bearing in mind that that I had just had 12 months off work, so they pot me on a form of disciplinary type return to work where I had to make improvements with in 3 months. They said that things would change and they would update policies and procedures. I’ve been writing policies and procedures before but nothing was going in. Shortly after this they threatened to dismiss me. I said I had never been dismissed from any job. After this there was a meeting, allegedly, a disciplinary meeting stage one, held with me – this never happened, I wasn’t working on the day this was meant to happen. So I went back on 6th Jan and got the Union involved. I then retired against my wishes. I was 60 at the time and they could have easily have found me another job.
On top of my diagnosis and leaving my job I went through a really big dip of depression. Following on from that I applied for Government Support Allowance, for those of you who don’t know you have to score 15 points to be eligible for employment and support allowance. So I went for the medical interview and scored Zero points — and still scored Zero points. So with the help of the Alzheimer’s Society I took the DWP to tribunal and had a member of staff from the Alzheimer’s Society there with my and my partner and I went from scoring zero to scoring 30 points! This didn’t help me financially as i was in receipt of a work pension. But I just wanted to say to anyone else who is going through this difficult time to Please Don’t Give Up! I went thought this tribunal process to try and help other people, because some people are just not in a position, emotionally or mentally to go through this tribunal process. So I’m hopeful that a lot will come out of this meeting tomorrow and the report and that everything will make life a lot easier for people like us living with dementia.
So I’m excited to go there and see what the outcome is and hopefully I will be able to come back and give you a bit of an update. Please persevere when it comes to Employment Support Allowance and Personal Independence Payments. If they change your scores or reduce you from enhanced rate of PIP to standard, which they also did to me, please appeal. We can win this battle and its about time the Government and the Dept of Work and Pensions realise that we have a life limiting illness, a live changing illness and its about time they stopped messing about and treating us to the rights and the benefits we rightly deserve. So that’s all for now and hopefully I will give you some feedback soon.. Thank you.
