a QUERY

a FREIND of mine has paranoid schizophrenia and she has been in hospital almost 4 months. Her dla was stopped on 19th august. The hospital now send a letter to dwp once you have been in hospital a month. Trouble is, dwp only got this letter in august it would seem and my friend was overpaid. She was too ill to tell the dwp about this. She is worried about the migration she is in receipt of income support with disability premium, dla, severe disablement allowance, council tax and housing benefit. She is worried sick and I am not sure what is the best advice to give her.

paula wrote:

a FREIND of mine has paranoid schizophrenia and she has been in hospital almost 4 months. Her dla was stopped on 19th august. The hospital now send a letter to dwp once you have been in hospital a month. Trouble is, dwp only got this letter in august it would seem and my friend was overpaid. She was too ill to tell the dwp about this. She is worried about the migration she is in receipt of income support with disability premium, dla, severe disablement allowance, council tax and housing benefit. She is worried sick and I am not sure what is the best advice to give her.

If your friends is still in hospital, then perhaps getting her to speak with either the hospital social workers or the PALS service at the hospital, or even her nursing team, who should be able to point her in the right direction.

Pete

If she's in hospital, the best thing to do is to see whether there's someone there that could help. When I was in a psychiatric unit, the ward clerk sorted out benefits paperwork, but in some places, it's the social worker or nurse or whoever.

If she is migrated to ESA while she is in hospital, to begin with, she should get ESA on the basis of being a hospital inpatient.

Make sure she tells the council about her benefits. If she is an inpatient, it may affect her housing benefit and she may have to apply for discretionary payments, so she must get face to face advice from someone about this. Also, she should get advice as to whether there are any other benefits she might be entitled to such as council tax exemptions, which we cannot advise on here.