Finding work with chronic pain condition

[Inthewronglane]

Hi. I've literally just joined this forum because I'm at my wits end struggling to find employment due to my combination of health conditions. I just wondered, has anyone found themselves in a similar position and managed to get themselves back into employment? If so, have you any advice?

To provide some background info, I have been out of work for over 10 years now, firstly due to severe mental illness and in more recent years, interstitial cystitis (IC) aka bladder pain syndrome and vulvodynia.

Before I developed IC/BPS, I did several years of voluntary work (mostly admin based) to try to rehabilitate myself and gain experience in other roles when it became clear I would need a career change from my previous job / qualifications as I could no longer function in these areas.

However, just as my mental health was improving, I developed IC and vulvodynia and although my symptoms have improved a lot since the initial onset, I'm still restricted in the amount of physical activity I can do (including day to day things like walking, lifting etc), can't travel independently or tolerate frequent rides in the car. I also rely on a restricted diet; loose, thin clothing, and supportive footwear to minimise flare ups as even the slightest things can set off pain and urgency.

With my limited work history, lack of skills, mental health difficulties (including traits of ASD) and now IC and vulvodynia, I am losing hope of ever working again and I can't live like this. I need to work!

Any ideas welcome. TIA

I have a number of health conditions, including chronic pain. I took a fairly simple admin job at the council then moved up gradually. I find I manage due to flexitime and home working quite a bit. It was hard at first, learning the work. But once you know it it's quite stres free. I've not had much time off sick. Again it helps that the holidays are generous. So I'd recommend it, if you see any vacancies.

Some areas have a scheme called Working Win to help people with a health condition find and stay in work..
(Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10157) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Safari/537.36&ssu=&ssv=&ssw=&ssx=eyJyZCI6InNvdXRoeW9ya3NoaXJlLWNhLmdvdi51ayIsIl9fdXptZiI6IjdmNjAwMDExZWY1Mjg0LWIzNGItNGI4Yy04N2FmLTBjZTVmMDllYmM2YjE3NDMxMDc5NDczNDAwLWVmMzY0N2U4ZTQ4NTczYWUxMCIsInV6bXgiOiI3ZjkwMDAwNWIyMzFkYi0wZjQ1LTQ1NDMtYjI5My0xNjhjNDFhMzVmNTkxLTE3NDMxMDc5NDczNDAwLWNmZjM4YmUwOWNmNjBmYTgxMCJ9 www.southyorkshire-ca.gov.uk/Explore_Working-win
Not sure what area you are in but perhaps there is a similar scheme.

Thanks, that's really helpful. My only concern would be dealing with telephone calls in admin. I can do it but I'm not that great at it. Will keep an eye out

Thanks for this. Unfortunately there's nothing running in my area at present. I checked recently and program that had been running had just come to an end. Hope another one will get started soon