Favourable welfare outcomes

The re-application

Two weeks ago, I decided to avail myself of the services of my hospital’s social services department because my application for social security entitlements was stuck in the quagmire of bureaucratic indifference and basically in limbo.

I was to call the sickness benefit department last week but that was overrun with events regarding my new job so I just let things go and hoped for the best.

Two letters arrived in my post on Saturday with favourable decisions considering the lateness of my application and the complexity of the circumstances which had also suddenly changed.

All in to help

My very first formal application where I had the work coach fill in the forms at the unemployment office was in February and it became the datum for reckoning everything else.

All benefits can only go back 6 months at the maximum, so I will now be entitled to unemployment benefit at first and then sickness benefit from the day after I was admitted in hospital for treatment.

That would however end on the day I started my new employment which was last week – now one just has to wait for something to be paid into my account.

The system does work and in flexible enough if you know the system or having someone who knows the system sort things out for you.

Thanks and gratitude

I have been very fortunate that way and I have expressed thanks to all those wonderful people who contributed to making this work and I was so taken by the response when the social services expert replied saying she took great pleasure in helping me out.

The social security safety net is there for a reason and even for usually very independent people like myself, I find that anyone can need help and it is good to ask for that help, humbly but with a sense of entitlement too, if we have through our working lives contributed, it is there as a bridge through lean times to more prosperous times again.

Thanks to the system and its lifeblood of bureaucratic sustenance.