What a relief Cinnamon Well done for climbing the mountain and getting to the top.
I posted my application off last week (finally) and I am guessing it took about 20 hours to complete using the cerebra guidelines. I tried to do it an hour at a time and short bursts of intensive form filling in when my DS was out at school and I took a days holiday from work. I would love to have help but there arn't many organisations about willing to help at 11.30pm when my DS has finally dropped off to sleep and during the day when he was at school I was at work.
I actually think there is something very wrong when we need outside help to fill in a form - we are the experts in our kids conditions and care needs so surely the form needs to be in a format that we can complete. Unfortunately because of the one size fits all format (or one form fits all) it can be very hard to convey the needs of mentally effected children rather than physically effected kids on their form. For example why do they need the details of the GP and the specialist - my GP hasnt seen my DS for yonks - his specialist deals with his condition & medication and the local A&E deals with the suspected broken fingers / dislocated shoulders / concussion from running into a fully grown tree !!
I am not sure how the DWP think us parents of SN kids have a spare hour in the day never mind a spare 20 hours to fill in a form that, lets face it, is considered to be a pack of lies anyway because WE stand to financially gain from an award of DLA (I was told this when I went to appeal after the first application was turned down that because we stand to gain financially we are seen to be corrupt somehow). They choose who to write to for further evidence if they want to, so if they dont write to anyone and dont believe what you put on the form the onus is on you to sent mountains of evidence, reports, letters etc to ensure DLA is awarded - all this takes more time.
I am a bit worried about my application as school is now shut down for the summer and he has just been booted out and is waiting to start a new one in September so I have no idea how the decision makers will deal with that one so I enclosed parts of his end of term report which were, although accurate, quite offensive really (antagonistic, argumentative and petulant were some of my favourite descriptions !!!)
BTW on appeal following my original application my DS was still turned down because he had (since I originally applied) started to take medication for his ADHD (aprox 4 weeks before the appeal). They turned him down on the basis that the care need "had to last 6 months or more" and because his medication 'helped' (erm .... he wouldnt be taking it if it didnt!!) it was decided that the original decision to refuse would be upheld. All I said was that the medication "helped" - not that it eradicated the need to provide all the additional care because of his condition !
My opinion is that they look for an excuse not to award it rather than look for reasons to award. Trust me I would happily hand back every penny and more if my DS didnt require the level of care he does !!!!
Nine days for a decision - wow ! I'll bump the thread when my decision comes through.