Back in the DHSS

[tamaranth]

Except it's the DWP these days. Have spent the last hour filling out a form about my father and am still only on page 26. As he is already in nursing care, why do they need to know whether or not he can cook a hot meal? And as I don't see him day-to-day or spend a whole day with him, I don't know the answers to a lot of the questions ("How long does it take you to have a bath?") Unsure why I still need to fill this form out when he has not lived at home for over two years. I've given them the name and number of the nursing care director (who can print off my father's case notes and send them straight to the DWP).

Also, it's horrible. My father used to be a strong, capable man. Now I have to write things like "He has no strength in his hands and cannot turn a tap." And I have to sign the form, because he can't produce a signature any more.

"How many days a week would you have these problems?"

Seven days a week, for the rest of his life.

*kicks DWP*

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The regular updates are because many people's conditions do improve, even sometimes when the doctor has said there's no hope of that. I'm not quite sure why we're asking for the full details again.

The law regarding nursing and residential care remains a mess extremely complex; the short answer is that some things remain the same and some things are quite different for people in permanent care. The reason there's not a whole different system is that successive attempts to sort out a sensible approach haven't worked, eg because nobody can agree on what the right solution is.

We have various visitors, call centres, outreach and so on to help the confused, bereaved and less literate. The confused, bereaved and less literate are more likely to use our services than the population as a whole is. When I worked on a DSS counter, helping people with forms was a large part of our job; so much so that whenever people outline a brave new world for me in which DWP *doesn't* spend a lot of time helping people fill in forms, I tend to be really, really skeptical. I am, obviously, not speaking for the Department here.