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Now. where was I? Oh yes, following a major accident in 2009 which caused a fracture which three health medics didn't have the competence (Honley) to diagnose and for which there were ongoing complications for the misprescribing of medication for a condition I didn't have.
Well a department in Kirklees were supposed to do some work and didn't and still haven't. (from early 2016) and eventually the price of the work went up because the work wasn't done when it should have been. I stated that I would not pay the increased cost for the work as the increase was due to their delays. The work had gone up by over £600 with a £300 admin fee on top ( they left that to the end as a surprise). Now I was offered some small amount of compensation for the delays. It did not put me back in the position that I would have been in if the LA had not been so tardy so I refused. The latest is that they are now refusing to accept responsibility even though they offered me compensation for delays. I'll identify them later but i'm just wondering if I've been reading too many Alice in Wonderland stories. So here I am holding a letter in my hand from our local authority referring (for the first time) to something which happened six months ago. It is signed with a X. I am assuming that this refers to the fact that the person on the end of the letter cannot sign their own name rather than the love/hate relationship that the local authority and I have, has developed into something a little more seasonal.
To this end - given that the document is entirely unintelligible - I have posed a series of questions to them. These are focused on a) why they insist I should contact an entirely different department if I don't understand the document. Surely they should deal with it b) What does the document actually mean? (This is a BIG question) c) Why don't I have a proper signature and name so that I can contact a real person by email. It was mainly in Victorian times that people signed using a cross, as far as I am aware. If and when I get a response I will let you know but......................... it could be another six months. The is is the letter that I was sent the day before I had a nine hour operation on Sept 13th 2016 so that I wouldn't receive it until I came home. The letter basically states it is removing any support I had been allocated which was necessary giving the magnitude of the operation and post operative complications. I contracted bilateral pneumonia the following day and had to be rushed to another hospital which could deal with the sort of breathing problems I had.
Now a compassionate response would have been to put short term urgent care needs in place - not remove services altogether and fabricate a number of reasons why they couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't do so. None of them are applicable to putting short term urgent care needs in. Following a solicitor's letter sent some six weeks later, the local authority did an about turn and did, indeed, offer me this by which time I was sufficiently recovered not to need them. One of the wonderful advantages of belonging to a large family is that you always have someone who either has the specific knowledge and expertise you require or knows someone else who are quite willing to help out with whatever issue you wish to address.
I am fortunate that I have a lot of media contacts. I also have the skills to be able to write about issues which currently affect many of those with disabilities. I can't say that I particularly enjoyed girls grammar school but it did develop some of the skills that I did have. An ongoing problem with our local authority is their reluctance to consider any legitimate disability related expenses which should be taken off any assessed contribution a client is expected to pay prior to the commencement of such payments. This requirement to look at disability related expenses (DRE's) is enshrined in the Care Act 2014. Our local authority - Kirklees - does not, in my experience, ever raise the issue of DRE's with clients, neither does it ever counsel its clients to save receipts. If you do not collect receipts for DRE's and find out in a couple of years, through some other path, other than the local authority , then the LA will not look at your expenditure sympathetically . This will simply say it is your fault that they haven't given you the information that you require. Secondly, if you ever do find out about DRE's then they will do their utmost to make sure that they forget to look at them. I submitted some at the end of 2016 and they are still employing a number of strategies to avoid giving me a reason why they aren't DRE's. I have placed in another formal complaint but meanwhile I have been talking to a journalist - and other contacts - today about my local authority. Let me give you an example of a DRE. Most people who aren't on medication can get free travel insurance through their bank. Those unfortunates who have a disability may have to pay huge amounts for cover. The difference between one and another is the DRE. There are as many DRE's as there are people. Each person will have a specific need for certain DRE's. The decision for what is a DRE' is generally given to the social worker. For some reason, post my first win against the local authority, the responsibility for this was given to Client Financial Affairs at Kirklees and I am still waiting for them, two years later, for them to respond. Anyway, you will be pleased to know that I have started my book entitled Closing Ranks, which will take a detailed look at how officers have closed ranks in order to prevent clients from receiving what they are entitled to under the Care Act 2014. Yes, I will be naming names since the DTM Emma G, who removed my allocation to any means of services, the day before my nine hour operation in 2016, has been given the opportunity to apologise and has chosen not to . She informed me by letter, which couldn't possibly arrive in time, before my operation. Previously, any communication had been by email so the only reason for informing me by letter, on this occasion, would be to make sure I had no services at all when I returned home from hospital. I will display the letter she sent me in due course. The social worker who should have made sure I had services in place Emma O'..... was the one who made sure that I didn't have any. When I was rushed from one hospital to another given that I also had bilateral pneumonia, my husband informed her by email. There was no response until I contacted a solicitor at the end of October when Kirklees suddenly sprang into action offering me services which are free ( short term support needs) and could have been implemented on my return from hospital. This sw also fabricated a number of events including giving false information to the Local Government Ombudsman. All my assertions will be supported by documents. She has also been given the opportunity to apologise and has chosen not to. Should anyone believe the story that local authorities do not have any money, the law says that they cannot say they cannot afford the services which people are assessed as needing. The law says that they should use their reserves. Effective local authorities will do just that. |
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