"it would have been easier if they had just shared the

[Catja]

As George said, if the money intended to buy carers respite had been paid out to each individual carer, it'd be about £6 - what would you spend yours on?


To start the ball rolling,
I'd spend mine on a bottle of prosecco and a luxury foot soak.

What about you?

[Scally]

My own respite care package is worth about a thousand times that, so I'm not in a position to comment. However much we are awarded, it is intended for respite, not luxuries. I think if we want to be taken seriously, however much fun it might seem, we need to avoid using simplistic flawed arguments and hollow rhetorical gestures.

[Guest]

I, like many people have no respite, the money allocated in my husband's IB for respite. £10 per week, goes towards saving for contingency costs and until May this year, and even then I had to pay social service's contribution as well as ours for the first eight weeks until they reimbursed the account, we had no help whatsoever. So why not have some fun deciding what we would spend the £6 on, the government failed to ring-fence the money and many PCTs have not ring-fenced the money either and where that has happened few, if any, carers will benefit, we may at least have some fun rather than simply resent the way in which carers' needs are ignored?

I would put my £6 towards a punchbag to hit when people who can afford to be are smug .

Sometimes Rob..... .

[Scally]

There are some folk on this list who are too posh to push.....
for respite, I mean!

[Guest]

There are some people on this list who have tried to get services via a hard fought-for carers assessment and failed

[Scally]

if at first you dont succeed ....
I have the singular advantage that time is on my side... by the time my son reaches retirement age not a single social worker in post now will still be standing ....

But seriously, there is a lot of respite out there, like all resources folk need to state their case clearly and keep fighting for it.

[Guest]

if at first you dont succeed ....
I have the singular advantage that time is on my side... by the time my son reaches retirement age not a single social worker in post now will still be standing ....

Neither will you, if I do not get you first old age will . And do stop amending your posts before I can post or it could be even earlier .

I think that access to respite is very much dependent on the postcode lottery, I have today looked at another LA's criteria and in that LA respite is only available to carers whose carees meet the critical care needs criteria, in an ideal world any carer caring for 35 hours a week or more would qualify for respite, we are the only workers who not have a statutory entitlement to time off.

[Scally]

OK, I promise not to change this one.
If you arent getting respite then the chances are either you are getting it wrong or you dont need it.
Moral? Keep trying....

[Scally]

Just as that was getting fun... where did she go?
If you ever wonder what people are doing in between posts I'm teaching my son to tie his shoelaces with some success whilst watching "have i got news for you" ... now thats multi-tasking!!

[Guest]

No, I got up the noses of the local area team by refusing to let them fob me off when I asked for a carer's assessment and the experience was sufficiently unpleasant to not want to repeat it in a hurry. I have always met the criteria, I also meet the criteria for an IB in my own right but one is quite enough to manage, maybe one day when I have the time and energy...