MECFS Blog: Applying For A Council House – Post 2 – The Paperwork

In this post  I explained that I’m at the start of a process to apply for a council house here in the UK. 

Here’s what I did last week:

1. Went onto my Council’s website and used their online information to guide me about what to do. I wrote down some notes to help with brain fog.

2. Found out that there were 3 things that they expected to support my application:

a) fill out the generic application form online. I did that and it took about 2 hours.

b) then download, print out and fill out an additional medical assessment form.

c) provide supporting evidence for the medical assessment form.

As I am applying for a council house based on medical grounds, I have to produce as much medical information as I can to support what I am saying in the form, is the reason for my application.

Thankfully a lot of this information I have anyway because the ME Clinic sends me letters summarizing appointments I’ve had with them. I’ve already battled to have a letter explaining that I’m doing Graded Exercise – the most recent contact – and have that also.

If you, like me, have been through a Disability Living Allowance application and appeal and an ESA Work Related Activity Group challenge and appeal, it’s exactly this type of documentation you have to use in an application for a council house on medical grounds.

I had a lot of help with those two appeals from a Disability Rights Worker  who I called Stella. I followed her instructions to the letter and it worked so I am doing that again with this application.

Planning for Brain Fog 

The council guidelines state they will give me a response within 5 working days. That’s a steep deadline when you are starting from scratch and know you have to go to the Council and provide them this evidence in person.

I had to use the weekend to get the documentation together and write the covering letter. Phew. Brain fog completely kicked in BUT as I’d already gone through a DLA appeal and an ESA appeal, it helped.

I have basically approached this application in the same way.

Council Medical Form

The Council medical form is very simple and only 4 pages long. It asks for information like the name, contact details and telephone number of your GP. It also asks for the name, contact details of any hospital consultant you are in the care of.

It gives you a box with 4 lines in it, to describe how your illness affects you and how a change of housing will impact on your health condition.

It also asks you for your disability status. I’ll come back to this a bit later on.

The form can be filled in by someone else and countersigned by you.

It will take an hour to fill out properly if you are having a good brain fog day.

By the way – I broke the rules and wrote outside of the boxes and on the bits of the form that you shouldn’t write on. I put “please see medical notes” where I thought they should view them instead of reading the form.

How I filled it out..

4 lines is not long enough to explain the symptoms and impact of my illness, or the impact of my housing on my illness.

How I tackled it was to briefly summarise what that section was asking for, and then write “please see additional medical information attached.” at the end.

I did that in every section that was asking for a longhand answer.

This form took a day to look at and mentally process and then about 2 hours to fill out from beginning to end.

Asking ME Clinic for support 

The ME Clinic are not social workers and so they weren’t aware of my housing status. I emailed them to explain in depth what the situation is and asked for their help if the Council contacted them.

I had a quick reply from the Phhysiotherapist I am under the care of for Graded Exercise. She said that although the form asks for a Hospital Consultant’s name, I should use either her name, or the name of the Clinical Psychologist I used to see.

She also said I should use all the documentation they’d ever provided.

Asking my GP for support 

I will need my GP to be on board and ready to receive a phone call or contact from the Council. My GP is, I have to say, a bit rubbish when it comes to understanding MECFS.

So my plan is that I will photocopy the entire application and the entire medical notes and give my GP a copy of it to refer to. I will photocopy it before I had the application over to the Council, obviously – can’t do it afterwards 😉

Medical notes 

I printed out every letter I’d had from the ME Clinic. At the top of each piece of paper I wrote:

1) My name

2) My Council housing application number which was given to me when I filled in the online form.

3) The number of pages i.e. 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3. That helps the Council organise a lot of paper and has really helped in the past with appealing decisions when paperwork “went missing.”

4) Labelled each type of evidence differently. i.e. ME Clinic was titled “ME clinic”, Disability Status was titled “Disability Status”.

5) Gave each of the pages in the entire pack of additional information a number – 1 of 20, 2 of 20, 3 0f 20.

Covering letter 

I wrote an extensive covering letter. This referred to what was said in the medical notes. It was subdivided into headings to make it easier to read. For the section about my home I made sure that I referred to information that is contained in the medical notes. Doing that supports my application and makes it easier for someone in the Council to locate it in the notes and read.

Be assertive and clear 

I am applying for a council house based on the impact of my home on my MECFS symptoms.

It isn’t good enough to say: “My home really makes me ill.”

I have to be accurate and specific. I have said: “Detailed in my medical notes from the ME Clinic it states that I experience fatigue, problems with immunity, insomnia, hyersomnia and sensitivity to cold. My home is…….during winter it …….this means that I my symptoms decline to such an extent that I am unable to function. As my notes make clear, I am mostly house bound.”

Then I added in the financial aspects: “I am single, have no assets, I have attempted to move locally but I private landlords will not accept me due to benefit status. I have never defaulted on rent payments. I have no financial resources to afford private tenancy arrangements. ”

I added that I’ve tried applying for a Council home previously but that I was turned down. I explained since then my symptoms have increased massively.

Medical notes 

I took a ruler and underlined key sentences in my medical notes. I judged what key sentences were. I underlined sections about symptoms and impact on my life. I didn’t underline sections about treatment.

I highlighted those sentences and on each individual document from top to bottom of the page I labelled each underlined section with numbers. From the top the numbers were 1,2,3 and onwards.

This helps the Council when they refer to my documents. They can say “In the ME Clinic letter dated 6th July 2014, point 3…” rather than “your letters aren’t clear enough.”

Counselling 

I have included a letter saying I am receiving counselling. My GP has this letter too but it helps to separate it out.

Landlord 

I have made it clear in the covering letter that I do not want my landlord informed or involved with the application.

Financial situation 

The UK charity Shelter says that it is essential to explain in any application for a Council home that you do not have the financial resources to privately rent. I have done this.

Disability status 

In the UK you are termed disabled when you are in receipt of Disability Benefits. This is a complex issue because the current government has made this system long winded and a lot of disabled people like myself have been prevented from continuing with applications or are delayed.

I was called to a Tribunal for an appeal I made when I wasn’t awarded Disability Living Allowance. I have the paperwork on this and the letter I wrote to explain why I wasn’t continuing.

I do have a disability under the terms of the 2010 Equalities Act. Also in my ESA documentation it states I receive a ‘Disability Component’ – I have made that clear in the covering letter and also included the DLA documentation at Tribunal and a copy of the ESA form which states – basically – that I am disabled !!

ALWAYS assume you are going to have to appeal ….

As picky and irrelevant as this seems right now, it will be worth it in spades when you come to challenging a decision made against you, because that will have to be done using the documentation you’ve provided.

If you’ve ever worked with a lot of paper you know how much better it is when it’s organised or when someone sends you something that is clear, legible, makes sense and organised.

It’s weighing the odds.

Got that done ? 

Yes. Done. It is all ready to be photocopied.

Covering letter to the GP 

I have typed a brief covering letter to my GP. They are going to get a full copy of all this information anyway and the work I’ve done – hopefully – will help them with locating everything in my notes. I’ve done the hard work for them.

Covering letter to ME Clinic 

I have written to the ME Clinic and given them a copy of the full application letter, but not the full documentation. They don’t need it because they have all the letters anyway.

Done. 

I’m off to the Council this morning.

Wish me luck !

THE MECFSBLOGGER 2015

 

 

MECFS Blog: Applying For A Council House – Post 1

Those of you who follow this blog ( thank you so much by the way! ) and live outside of the UK might not know about the UK and Council Housing – or Social Housing as the Politically Correct call it. I’m going to call it Council Housing. 🙂

I made a big decision last week. It’s time to go down the council house route. 

I never EVER thought at the beginning of having CFSME that I would still be ill 3 years later.  I look back on that now and wonder why. I think it was because I had a lot of belief, optimism and hope. I really did believe – completely believe – that if I rested and allowed myself time to recover it would happen naturally. No-one told me otherwise in the GP surgery or the ME Clinic either.

I can hear you laughing at my naivety on that  all the way from here ! 😉

You know what, I still have a lot of optimism and hope that I will improve. However along the journey in the last 3 years I’ve had a lot of knocks. I’ve lost my job and had to apply for state benefits in order to stay in my own place and have enough money to buy food and essentials.

Again. I never expected that I’d be in that situation but I am so there you go. No point getting angry or upset about it. Que sera sera…..and all that. 

I deal with it as positively as possible. Although I had to fight tooth and nail to get the benefits I was entitled to and to be placed in something called the ESA Support group.  Once I did, I could properly rest and start to think about recovery.

Because of the way the UK administers state benefits, I’ve also had to move home. Not once, but twice. This is because when the current coalition government came to power they took a decision to slash welfare benefits in order to pay back the debt the country was in as a result of the banking crisis and the global recession.

They introduced a heavily biased decision against those most in need – that all people on Housing Benefit ( that means the local Council pays your rent for you ) have a cap past which the Council won’t pay.

I.e. if you want to rent a home for £1000.00 PCM, the government will only pay up to £875.00 of that. You have to find the rest. If you are on benefits, that’s got to come out of your Employment and Support Allowance. If you had any money spare to pay that, you wouldn’t be allowed to be ON benefits in the first place.

I’ve never been able to own my own home.

I’ve always lived in or around London. Because I’ve been single more than I’ve been attached, I have never been able to have the disposable income after paying out on everything to do with work and life in London to save up the deposit for a home. I am not alone in this.

As “affordable housing” in London starts at a cool £250,000 and deposits are at 25% of that, you can appreciate why.

London is hugely expensive and the low cost housing crisis genuinely exists.

Compound this with the fact that since the 1980s Council Housing, for people on low incomes, has been sold off either to private buyers or to developers and you have a massive gap between what is affordable housing for people on low incomes and rents charged by private landlords.

So – I’ve always rented. Until I got ill I could afford the rents in London – just. Since then I can’t. I’ve had to move into far, far smaller properties that you can barely swing a cat in, to live somewhere that costs under the amount of housing benefit payments of £875.00.

But hey – I’ve got somewhere and I’ve kept my independence. I talk about my house moves as ‘downsizing’ and ‘simplifying’, which they were. I couldn’t handle living in a larger home than I do and all the things I’ve got rid of in order to live in a far smaller home are good for my MECFS.

I live in a small home, on one floor, with only the minimum amount of stuff around me. Minimum clothes, minimum furniture, minimum books, DVD’s, bathroom stuff and kitchen stuff too.

I got rid of all my CDs, all my videos, all my books, all the shoes I didn’t wear, all the clothes I didn’t wear and all my personal stuff is locked away in one portable cabinet.

I live a very simple life.

Not as bad as slum housing: but I need better.

 

The problem is that my home is sub standard.

This was not immediately apparent when I moved in. However 2 winters on from the house move and I now know why it is so cheap.

It is cold and it is damp. Very cold and very damp. There is no central heating in one part of an extension and that means during winter it is unbearable living here. I can’t afford to heat it, either, because it’s heated with electricity and the heating bill alone comes in at over £100.00 PCM during winter.

That’s 1/4 of my Employment and Support Allowance benefits on keeping warm.

I can’t afford that so I spend winter huddled around a fan heater, wearing layers of clothing and keeping all the curtains closed. Occasionally I put the heating on, usually for an hour a day, it’s a treat for when it’s really cold.

With the MECFS symptoms around internal temperature disregulation, problems with immunity and the rest, I have to accept that my home is making me ill.

Yup.

It’s taken a lot to admit that because there are good things about my home.  It’s in the area I want to live in and it has a garden. My garden is my sanctuary. During warm months I spend all my time there, resting, relaxing, sleeping, doing minimal gardening and enjoying being outside. That is good for my MECFS too.

Last week I realised 2 things: 

1. I am not better from MECFS and the likelihood is that I won’t recover quickly. It’s a slow process.

2. I have to address my housing problems.

Ah ha! I hear you say. Why not simply move house?

Well, I can’t. I’ve searched and searched for a landlord who will accept that I’m on benefits due to ill health and every single estate agency and lettings agency locally has slammed the door in my face.

They say I need a guarantor to guarantee my rent for 6 months to a year (!!!) or I have to pay rent for a 6 months to a year up front.

This is completely impossible. I do not have the resources and neither does anyone around me!

On top of that, the Council doesn’t have a list of preferred landlords who will accept tenants on Housing Benefit because no landlords around here want the problems they perceive are associated with those tenants. They don’t need to do it – they can charge extortionate rents and get away with it because I live in London.

What a crappy hopeless situation! 

I have decided that I am going to apply to my local council to be put on the list for council housing.

It was one of those decisions that comes along after months of thinking around and around an issue.

One night it popped into my head. I decided I’d look into it. I went ahead and logged into my council’s website and started the online form.

It took about an hour and a half and I finished it.

I pressed send. Something pinged back saying it had been received. It then said I’d been put in Band D – that’s the lowest priority need. What I now have to do is amass the medical evidence together to send to them with a medical assessment form. I’m in the midst of starting that now.

I’m using all the information from the ME Clinic and most of the evidence I’ve used in Employment and Support Allowance appeals and Disability Living Allowance appeals.

This is a totally new thing in my life and I have no idea what’s going to happen. But I have to try….

I’ve decided that I’m going to blog about what happens with this application.

I paid into the state system for almost 25 years of my working life. I got ill. I am still ill.

If I’m not eligible for Council Housing, then who is…….?

THE MECFS BLOGGER 2015