Mixed emotions

I am actually now quite angry as well as being thoroughly relieved. But that is ten times better than it was because the past few weeks have been a terrible nightmare and I was thinking the men in white coats would have to be called!

I get ESA contributions based and was told by them despite telling them all the other benefits I claim that I would have to pay for my prescriptions which I thought extremely unfair considering when I was working and claiming working tax and child tax I had the help. Now I was being told even though my circumstances are near enough the same as the income related based esa lot I would have to pay and they wouldn't.

This stress was horrendous as I have medication for depression/anxiety/panics and also see a psychotherapist every week. So paying out for all this would have put me on even worse income than those on income related! And no they wouldn't even consider downgrading me to that element either (I did ask)

Anyways everyone was saying no and I really need to get better because I also look after my son who is autistic and inattentive a.d.d amongst other problems so I had thought there must be some help I could claim. Even the Benefit Enquiry Line said nope but after I nagged them to send me a form hc1 so I can at least try she begrudgingly acknowledged that I could have it and would send it out.

Well today after another day of complete breakdown, crying, panicking etc I finally found a snippet just by accident saying and I quote ' You will qualify if the household income shown on your award notice is £15,276 a
year or less and you are getting:
• Child Tax Credit with or without Working Tax Credit, or
• Working Tax Credit only, including a disability or severe disability element.'

That I felt some glimmer of hope and I called up the tax credits people again. I made sure I asked the right question including quoting their article etc. This time I had a nice lady who basically said that I can keep using my certificate and just to check with the prescription people to see if I am still eligble with them after it ends and the prescription lady said its down to the HMRC tax credits people if they say I am then I will be.

At this moment there are tears of happiness. The relief is immense. So even after it runs out in June I will still be able to claim Now I can book up my optician appointment and my dentist work can continue!

So if any of you who have been told by the esa that as you are on contributions based and therefore you can't get help double check if you claim even just 1 of the tax credits as you most probably will be allowed to regardless what the esa people say.

What really annoys me though as there are still many who will miss out. It would make more sense to allow esa all parts to claim help with nhs costs and maybe for them to not test you for contribution based first and stop there allowing no consideration for changes.

I think my mistake was that because I didn't know I could claim a 4 week tax credit run on that I hurriedly claimed esa - so at the time they worked it out they took into account my working tax credit run on even though I was unaware of it. When I realised this the esa lot refused to recalculate my claim and so I was stuck. They used my working tax claim even though I no longer receive it. How fair is that!

Now I have the bloomin atos questionaire that I have put off to complete.

Half of me wishes I had not claimed esa but claimed benefit as a carer to my son because now I am worrying about if they make me go to work how will I look after him. Before I worked from home which was isolating for me but the only real solution to enable me to look after my son as well.

Ho hum as they say

Thank you for your tip to other claimants - there will be some who will benefit from this.

Please could I ask you (and others) to post shorter messages than this, even if it means posting one message then another directly after?

It is very difficult to moderate long messages because of the layout of the moderators' view of the screen, where we see no paragraph breaks and the column is narrower.