No payment for 7 years

Sookie
Sookie Online Community Member Posts: 5 Connected
edited May 20 in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

My husband has had to deal with our adult sons’s benefits with no knowledge of the processes for the last 7 years as my mental health issues meant that I could no longer do so. I’ve now had the help I needed to get back on track and started getting reacquainted with my son’s benefits again. I noticed on his UC that there was no mention of his ESA which he’d been getting for years before my breakdown. So we looked back through old bank statements and found that my son’s last payment was in 2018! There had been no change to his circumstances and as he’s autistic, no change to his disability. My son has missed out on more than £30,000 of benefits and I don’t know why. My husband is now on benefits too and the bills are pilling up. We can no longer live in our home and my son is having to stay with his 80 year old grandmother. I don’t know how we’re going to cope.

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Comments

  • Holly_Scope
    Holly_Scope Posts: 2,653 Scope Online Community Coordinator
    edited May 20

    Hi @Sookie gosh, that sounds awful. Have you raised this with DWP to understand what happened to change the circumstances back then? Appreciate it likely won't change the situation (certainly not for the full period) but it's definitely worth questioning.

  • Sookie
    Sookie Online Community Member Posts: 5 Connected

    Trying to contact DWP is like trying to contact the moon unfortunately. I don’t know how many times I’ve called DWP only to wait in a phone queue for hours. As usual the government doesn’t give them enough money to even man the phone lines.

  • Kimi87
    Kimi87 Online Community Member Posts: 5,910 Championing

    Agree re excessively long call waiting times!

    Have you spoken to a trained benefits advisor?

    https://advicefinder.turn2us.org.uk/

  • mix_dage
    mix_dage Online Community Member Posts: 82 Empowering
    edited May 27

    @Sookie ,

    Raise the matter with your MP, no matter the political flavour. You can email them.

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/

    Try outline the date specifics of when payment stopped, your circumstances/ability to assist him during that period, if you are his appointee, and any other relevant information so they get a picture of the situation.

    Best of luck

  • casdix69
    casdix69 Online Community Member Posts: 7 Listener

    my sons stopped (temporarily) when he moved and they didn’t receive the change of address. I noticed the following month and called them and they restarted it but I guess if I hadn’t got in touch it would have been lost.

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