Some good news about ESA

I should not feel the need to write this. This should not have to be highlighted as an amazing good news story, but it should be a basic standard expected of all assessment centres, of all assessors and of everyone's experiences with claiming employment and support allowance.

I filled in my ESA50 and supplied relevant medical information as requested. I received an assessment appointment through the post. As there is no longer the option on the ESA50 to detail any reasonable adjustment for an appointment, this appointment wasn't suitable so I had to ring to ask for my three adjustments to be met. These were noted and met with a new, more suitable appointment time.

I arrived at the time stated and made myself known to the reception staff. My second question of "is my medical going to be recorded?" was met with, yes, I have your audio consent form next on the papers to sign.

I was told there would be a 20 minute delay because they were running late. At about 15 minutes in I was approached by a lady who said that I had been allocated to a male assessor and that she noted from my claim that I requested a female assessor. This would not be a problem she stated, but I may have to wait a little while longer once re-allocated.

I was called in after half an hour waiting. My assessment was recorded. I felt listened to, I felt that my assessor was knowledgeable enough in my impairment to provide a decent medical report by the way she was interacting with me.

After about half an hour the assessmnet was over and I was promptly given a copy of the CD recording.

About 3 weeks later I spent the day in panic because I had recieved a strange payment. Usually this means that my claim had stopped, and as this was what I was expecting this is what I had assumed. As it was a saturday I had no way of knowing what the payment was..

until I got the post and the news that I am in the support group, and that the money was backdated premiums for being there.

somethings things go right..

looking after yourself

I am currently feeling sorry for myself. I have a sore throat and feeling really wiped out, generally speaking "a bit under the weather".

Over the last 24 hours that I have been feeling like this I have spent a lot of time sleeping, I haven't been out, and I have been eating comfort foods.

I have made myself hot chocolate, found some telly to binge watch, and perhaps a film or 2. With my concentration span one or usually lasts all day.

Someone came round with some food for me yesterday and to check up on me. I was really grateful as I really didn't have the energy to cook myself and it was really kind to be thought of.

I haven't felt guilty about all of this, because the best thing I can do to recover quickly is to listen to my body and what it is saying ,which is to rest and relax and be gentle on myself.

Its made me really think about how I react when I have a bad mental health time. I tend to try and ignore it, pretend it isn't happening and hope it goes away. I try to carry on as normal, but it never works and usually makes me feel worse.

I feel guilty and tend to stop looking after myself so well. I get angry at my limitations and frustrated at the world for not understanding.

I find all that "self care" stuff alien, and "not for me". I can go without that, I just need to carry on and I'll be ok, thank you.

I am going to challenge myself to treat my bad mental health days in the same way I would a cold. Treat myself to those "nice tissues", eat the comfort food, spend time in bed if I need to, look after myself more, be creative. Have a nice cup of hot chocolate.

Self care makes sense for a cold, so why not for mental health?

blame, guilt and understanding

Last night I realised that I had been feeling better all day, and that I had just noticed.

I spent the next hour trying to work out why my depression might have all of a sudden lifted when there was no major life change or big thing happened to do that. It got me thinking, why am I doing this? Why do I want to know what made me depressed in the first place?

In the past I would say that it was to do with blame. If I could blame something then it would make it somehow ok, give the depression a reason for being there and a reason for going. However, there is a big danger with this for me, that if I couldn't find a reason externally then I would focus on me, and start to blame myself, the choices I made, the reactions I had to things etc. This just made the guilt come along, and not long behind would be the depression again.

However, last night I realised that if I sought understanding, a neutral perspective as it were, that this is why i was depressed, and simply put anything that was internal down to the chemical reactions in my brain, as such something out of my control, then I could also consider it a learning process, and not a blame process.

I am hoping then that by neutralising the process of reflection that I can see more clearly why I get depressed, not so that I can avoid those things as such (especially if they are unavoidable), but so that I can understand that it will make me depressed and what I could perhaps do to protect myself, aside from avoidance, if that strategy doesnt work.

what is a photo?

There are many different reasons why people take photos and as many different ways to interpret them. These are my favourite reasons and my favourite way to interpret them.

I describe myself as an emotional photographer. Whilst I am a competent technical photographer, which lays the foundation of any good image, I believe my strength comes from capturing an essence within the frame that goes beyond the technical, reaches into the viewer and grabs them on an emotional level.

I love to tell stories with my images. I believe that the power of a photo and the memory contained within it is a somewhat magical thread of frozen time, much like the pensive in Harry Potter. The photo tells a story, sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden.

Sometimes it is the photographers job to tease those hidden emotions out of the image, and sometimes this just isn't possible within the photo, so the photographer must also describe the image appropriately to accompany it ad elicit that emotional response in the viewer. The photographer becomes a guide then, to their life, or the subject they have captured. It is like asking the photograph questions.

Why was it taken?
what is it actually showing?
how does it make you feel?
Why does it make you feel like that?
What happened before the photo was taken and what happened after wards?
What memories does the photo bring to you?
what is the photos story?
who is in the image and why is that subject important?
what is in the foreground, and what is in the background, why have they been placed there?

These are some of the biggest questions I like to cover with my descriptions. The added bonus of describing an image is that for those who are unable to fully see the image with their eyes they can see it with their minds. It goes beyond the technical composition of description and tells the viewer a story.

Technical descriptions tend to answer these questions

Who is in the image, what is the subject in relation to you?
describe what they are wearing?
what are they doing?
where is the image taken?
what is in focus in the image?
What colours are predominant?
Is the image light or dark?
is there any detail that you wish to highlight?

One thing I always do though, as any good story teller must, either visually or writing, is leave room for the person to add their own interpretation, to leave enough of a gap for them to feel a personal connection to the image.
I find a real vulnerability to this, as my image is a conduit to my soul and inner most feeling and by sharing it with the world I am exposing those things alongside it. By leaving it open to be interpreted leaves it open to being misinterpreted. However, I also think that there is a beauty in this misinterpretation, as it means that the image is not only personally powerful, but collecitively so, and therefore adds to its overall power.

coming out as female

I go to a monthly gathering of like minded academics called the disability research forum. I came away from it challenged and inspired, as I often do, but also contemplative. For this academic season of talks we all introduced ourselves and our preferred pro nouns. It was introduced as a way of disrupting the normative assumption of gender binary, and it certainly worked for me.

I have never had to outwardly say I am female, as it has always been assumed. I often have to correct people with my daughter, because she often wears blue, and joggers. As I did so I felt strangely vulnerable, giving me a taste of what non normative gendered people might feel when having to explain their difference.

But also it was very indicative of my recent experience, where I am attempting to "become someone new". I did this mainly through changing my clothes, and for the first time wanting to embrace my femaleness. Before giving birth to my 3 year old I had been pretty fluid in my dress sense, embracing both male and female clothes, exploring both "sides" of clothes shops to get clothes that relfected my identity. Since giving birth however, I have become more restricted in my clothing choices as my physical body has become more "female", and unwilling to fit into the male shaped clothes. Aside from the practical difficulties of having to negotiate the more complex female clothing size system, it has also meant a complete shift in my body image, identity and place in the world.

I found myself wanting to wear skirts and dresses and enjoying the experience of being more female. I had never really considered this before sitting in the room declaring myself as female before, but I would say, looking back, that for the last month I have become the most societal recognizable "female" that i have ever been.

This is a really important experience, as I have never considered before what actually makes me feel "female". I certainly didnt even consider how much power my clothing choices has on that gender identity, even when going through the process of changing those choices.  This gender identity "shift" has not diminished or reduced my overall sense of self, but actually strengthened it once more. in the same way as I was previously happy being quite fluid in my dress sense and embracing "femaleness and maleness" in my dress sense, I get equal strength from this new choice. The strength, i feel comes from being confident in whichever identity one choices, and not the choice itself.

My three year old on the other hand is currently becoming gender aware and is what I like to call "gender curious". They was a boy yesterday morning, but then they decided half way through the day that they was now a girl. (this is perfectly normal and its just part of life) I just hope as a parent I can facilitate the journey through life as openly as my child needs me to be. :)

A new research project

It is no secret that I really hate shopping for clothes. In times gone by I used to attempt to navigate the womens section of a shop, only to find myself drawn to the mens side, purely because of the simplicity of the small to x large sizing, and my boyish shape suiting those clothes.
Now, however I am not shaped like this, as becoming a Mum means hips, and hips that dont fit into mens clothes anymore.
I run into shops and out again as quickly as possible, hoping to find something that vaguely works with my bodyshape and price range and colour preferences. It doesn't usually go well.
Resigned to t shirts and leggings most of the time I decided that drastic action was needed.
However, having recently realised my love of applying theory and research to real life I decided to give it a try with clothes.
First off, the literature review. IE. the internet. I found some old how to look good naked shows on channel 4 online, and watched a few of them. As much as I dont want to look like the newly made up ladies at the end of the show, I didn't judge their choices, because as women we all have the choice of how we choose to wear, and these ladies choices had certainly transformed them into more confident versions of themselves. I took some interesting observations from this show. Different shapes of clothes corresponded to fitting best on different ladies body shapes. The idea with it is that the more the clothes suited your shape, the more condfident you felt in them. Seemed simple.
I then did a bit of research around the body positive movement. Basically wear beyond the rules of fashion, wear what you feel happy in and dont let anyone tell you different. I love this method of choosing clothes, but  feel quite scared of this method, especially as there are no particular rules or guidelines. For a novice clothes wearer like myself, I needed a much stronger methodology for picking my sample size.
My final research area picked up on body shape. I did some research and found that there is such a thing as a body shape calculator, where you put your measurements in and out pops the shape you are and the clothes that suit that shape! So, after tackling the tape measure and entering the numbers into the boxes I found a shopping list of the clothes that would suit me. This as it were is my sample group. All I then needed to do was go out into the field and conduct some research to establish the presence of these clothes in shops, and see if any of them would suit my study enough to be my research participants.
As I went through the shops I found it a lot easier to look for clothes, as I was not shopping, but researching, and looking for certain clothes and shapes and cuts. All of this new knowledge gained through my literature review stage gave me some confidence in what I was looking for and took the pressure off.
As I headed to the fitting room with a few samples to "interview" them I did not find myself in a position of dread, but curiosity. Would these clothes really suit my shape, as the literature suggested? By taking my own personal feelings away from the process and simply looking at it as a matching process, it took away the guilt and body hang ups I have about my ever changing body. I de personalised the experience,  so that when an outfit didn't fit, it wasn't about my bodies failure to conform to the standards of clothing, but the clothings failure to conform to my body shape. By taking photos of each outfit I could then use these later as a learning process and evaluate each item on how it worked. It could also inform future studies and future outings. Useful data, as it were.
It also meant that I felt confident enough to hand back the clothes without shamr that some of them didn't fit, as I was not involved in buying them, but doing research around body shape, and clothes shape.
In conclusion I found that the whole body shape thing really helped me discover and navigate through the world of womens clothes a lot easier. There are even a couple of shops out there who have virtual assistants that search by body shape. I am still conducting research, and not ready to move to the buying stage just yet.
But I am learning.

state sponsored abuse

So having read this article https://www.buzzfeed.com/laurasilver/these-couples-say-the-disability-benefits-system-is?utm_term=.sceVLNePB#.jpWmwqxXJ

I feel I need to comment too.

I claim personal independence payment. This entitled my husband to claim carers allowance for me and then claim income support for both of us. This worked really well because it meant we had a stable income and didn't have to worry too much about money.

Until it went wrong. I rang the DWP and informed them that I was no longer part of the couple claim and my husband was no longer entitled to carers allowance. As the second person on the claim I could not do anything with the claim. It had to be my husband who rang in. Slight problem there, as we were not really on speaking terms. The advice from the DWP was to report him (and therefore me) to the fraud line. This was the only way I could stop the benefits and start claiming something in my own right.

All this took time, leaving me with no money during a very difficult transitional time where I needed as much support as possible, and not having to spend time, effort and money ringing the DWP, fraud line etc. etc.

Not only that I still have to sort my housing benefit out, because I need to claim backdated that I had no income during the time that all this was going on.

It is all a big mess.

When I was speaking to a support worker about whether I had experienced domestic abuse, we went over the definitions of the different types. Financial abuse is
 a form of domestic abuse.

An abusive partner might stop you from having control over your money as a way of trying to exert power over you.

A financially-abusive partner might also be physically violent, but it’s not always the case.

Financial abuse in the home – whether or not it’s accompanied by aggression or physical violence – can leave you feeling isolated, lacking in confidence and trapped.

It can include:

• Controlling your bank account;
• Running up debts in your name;
• Stopping you from getting (or keeping) a job;
• Making you hand over your wages or benefits;
• Making you ask your partner – or others – for money;
• Stealing, taking or demanding money from you and/or;
• Not allowing you to spend money on yourself or your children; and
• Making you account for every penny you spend – for example by showing receipts

 from here: https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/protecting-against-financial-abuse)

So, yes, thanks to the DWP and the way the benefits system works I was actually being financially abused. My question is though, who was the abuser, my husband or the DWP for putting me in that position in the first place?