When I became disabled back in 2017 I was a thriving Head of a Dance Department working in an intense busy teaching environment!  I also had a salary to match the work of £45000 per year!

Unfortunately I developed spondylosis and fibromyalgia which stopped dead my dance career in its tracks, I already suffered from long term anxiety and got to the stage I could not complete my work anymore due to severe pain!  My anxiety was also worse because of the worry!  On top of this I had 4 cancer scares which really spiked my anxiety to where I was having daily attacks!

I tried to early retire on the grounds of ill Health.  However my occupational therapist said it was a long drawn out process and  I was so bad I decided to just early retire.

During my working life I already had applied for Personal Independence Payment which has just the same procedure and wait times but was eventually awarded it in 2018!  Two years before I left my teaching career!

When I left in August 2020 I started the process of applying for LCWRA and found out that the procedures for this  did not make sense!  I have several questions about it.

1:  As a sick person you have to submit sick notes for 3 months until they send you a UC50 form which you fill out to say how your conditions affect you!  I was lucky and waited 3 months.  Others have waited over a year!  Why can they not speed this up based on your conditions particularly if they are degenerative or perminant!

2:  You then have to wait until you are given a telephone or face to face assessment by a nursing professional!  Then a decision is made about your condition.  I waited 5 months for mine!  However they made the decision about me back in Jan when I had the assessment so why did I have to wait so long?  Others have waited up to 2 years!

3:  In order for me to speed my own process up I had to write to my local MP and put in an official complaint to the DWP!  Then I was paid the money that I was owed for having my career ripped away from me early from no fault of my own from a system I had paid into for over 30 years!

I find that people are so complacent about wait times they do not realise they have a human right to money as they cannot physically work anymore!  The DWP say they are understaffed and are dealing with a backlog from Covid!  But my response to that is trust our professional  doctors and practitioners and speed up the process as you obviously cannot implement your own procedures properly and within a reasonable time frame and in the meantime are demonising a lot of disabled people who desperately need your help!

This petition is not for me anymore as I have been paid LCWRA money and suffer severe pain every day where some days I am totally housebound but for all those people still waiting on assessments it does not matter that the money is backdated. If you have been struggling for 2 years, sick and unable to work that can feel like an eternity of worry and stress!  Some people often give up.  I think this is the thought process behind the DWP taking so long! This should not be allowed to happen and it’s about time the disabled stand up and say enough is enough!  I’m hoping this petition will give us that voice!