Aww bless you hun, I agree with others you should def claim.

Hi Julie,

I know different areas have differing levels of support but is there anyone at all who can deal with your family as a whole?
We have a lovely lady whose title is a welfare rights officer, she is employed by the council.
We had a rough few years with both my husband's and son's health.
She was able to look at our current situation and say exactly which benefits we should be on.
This lady comes out to the house and does all form filling for us.
The whole system can be a bit of a nightmare and I don't know where we would have been without her steering us through it.
She has even gone to a tribunal on our behalf and won.

She is amazing with those DLA forms, I wouldn't have known to right a fraction of what she was including.
As you say, having to do these forms can be so depressing. I really couldn't do them alone.
If your council don't do a similar service could your health visitor help, or a community nurse?

I think what you say Dawn about getting a local service to assist with the family is a great idea.
This however is one of my major concerns that in some areas some great services exsist and really help people and in other areas some services are just not there.
It does feel like a postcode lottery in terms of some services and its a shame we dont have a national standard