LCWRA

Kavcakes

Hi there,

I was awarded LCWRA early 2021 for mental health difficulties. Since then I have been diagnosed Autistic and also with 2 chronic illnesses.

I'm unable to work at the moment and will never be able to work a full time position as one of my conditions is ME/CFS which is classified as Moderate. I've never had a work coach until very recently who runs the department at my local job centre that deals with people with disabilities and long term conditions. My first appointment was not positive, I explained about all of my conditions and how they affect me but it must have fallen on deaf ears. I then had a flare/relapse in my ME/CFS and was unable to attend my 2nd appointment because of this so I asked to rearrange, was ignored, they still called me but I didn't answer and they then sent me a snotty message through the UC website saying that the appointments are mandatory and that by not attending I risk my benefits. That caused a meltdown as you can imagine and then my flare/relapse got worse.

I posted this in a disability benefits Facebook group with other information asking for advice and it was pointed out to me that on LCWRA that you have no work commitments, so you're not expected to work, look for work or prepare for work. Of course, I did know this, but I hadn't made the connection until it was pointed out to me. I then searched on Google for answers to see if it had changed and came across this forum from a post in February of this year (2024) that someone had had something similar happened and they were adviced to remind the work coach that they had LCWRA and therefore have no work commitments. So my question is, is this still the case? I know their are suggested changes coming to LCWRA, but have they already come? Or is it still the case that on LCWRA you have no commitments and therefore do not need to work, look for work or prepare for work?

I have an appointment with them this afternoon and had sent them a message last night about this but have not received a response, so I am very nervous about bringing this up in our appointment today. I have since looked at my messages again and the first message about this "support" states that these appointments are voluntary for me. So this is making me think I don't have to attend these?

Sorry for the very long and jumbled message. Thank you.

Jimm_Scope

Hi @Kavcakes, welcome to the community! Hopefully we can help cover a few things here, don't worry about the message I think I understand it well enough 🙂. First of all I want to say that no changes have been implemented to LCWRA yet. The previous government made some changes to the Work Capability Assessment and so the criteria to get LCWRA that have yet to be put into place, but there have been no changes to how LCWRA works in regards to commitments.

It sounds like the work coach may think you are in LCW rather than LCWRA? LCW still has requirements for attending meetings with the work coach. LCWRA has no mandatory requirements for meeting with your work coach. I hope you can get this clarified with them today, if not you may want to consider taking it further, as the work coach shouldn't be causing you this extra stress by insisting you may be sanctioned for not attending appointments that are not mandatory to you.

Kavcakes

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/913293#Comment_913293

Hi there, thank you so much for getting back to me! I forgot to update this.

So, I had my phone call appointment for which I took whilst in bed because I was so overwhelmed and couldn't stop shaking. It was a different person than the one I spoke to last time and straight away I asked if these appointments were mandatory and straight away she said "no, as you're in the LCWRA group and have no work commitments. So these appointments are voluntary". I could have cried! I asked a few more questions to doubley make sure and then explained that I'd been pressured into these appointments by the person I spoke to previously and that I didn't want these sessions and clearly wasn't ready for them. She said that was absolutely fine and clarified that everything would go back to what it was before. Which is fantastic. I'm still processing and still feel uber stressed by this, but, at least it's resolved now.

Thank you again for answering my question!

Take care!

Jimm_Scope

I'm glad you got someone who clearly knew a bit more about what they were talking about and cleared it right up for you!

Do you have any tasks that help you unwind or relax at all? For me it's usually reading a book, it helps me sort of escape from the stress of the world.

Kavcakes

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/913303#Comment_913303

Yes, me too. I'm very grateful for it, because I think I would be feeling very different right now if things hadn't have gone the way they did.

That's a really great suggestion, thank you. I am an avid reader but haven't been able to focus on anything for the last few days because I've been so anxious, so I haven't read much. But, I restarted a comfort watch and I knit and crochet, so I think I'll do either of those as well. I find when my hands are busy I feel a bit more level. Whereas I have to have a relatively level mind to be able to concentrate on reading.