Information

In reagards to this excellent site, i thought more professional bodies would have heard of you. My local benefits advisor has not. I had to contact him the other day about the four week from 6 week change to esa questionnaire regulation. When I mentioned how excellent your site is for information at a local mental health charity is was laughed out of the room. Well, i would rather be prepared than not, and I think the advice that is given is helpful, if i had not found you i would have a clue what to do or expect. I was able to help a friend with her questionnaire due to your excellent guides.I know that we have thanked the mods before but again thank you guys, your endless patience when we have asked the same kind of questions again and again, and the tireless work you all put in to our queries really amazes me as you battle health problems yourself. Thank you.
In my local area the benefits advisor is using service users to help others fill out the esa questionnaire as he is swamped. He calls is work expereince for service users!

Professional advice organisations tend towards a different site Paula. I know that some advisers use both.

In respect of your last comment about service users filling in the forms, my own experience shows that may not be such a bad thing.

I suffer from long term mental health issues and, after a very long spell in hospital, I started my advice career by volunteering. It was an invaluable experience to enable me to get to where I am now, and it was important to me in being able to give something back as i was assisted with my own benefit and other legal issues by CAB and NSF (now Rethink) volunteers.

Thank you Paula

Interesting to read this. Agencies do subscribe to us, not all of course and some have their own resources they prefer to use. How rude of the charity to behave in that way to you, as preparation is so important as you rightly say.

Once again many thanks for your kind comments.

Kind regards

Michael