Turned down for family fund before assessment

[LoocyLoo27]

Hi there,

I was really surprised to receive a letter from Family Fund yesterday saying we'd been turned down for a grant. There was only room for a couple of sentences to explain out DS's disability and I always heard that they had an assessor call or come for a home visit to assess the needs of the child. I'm really certain our little boy qualifies as they have to meet three of the criteria for care needs and he meets five of them but there was such little room on the form the describe this.

We included evidence from his teacher about his needs, he is at SA plus at school and needs one to one help.

They've said we can appeal, does anybody know the process for this or how long it takes? We applied for a holiday and were hoping to take him to a UK holiday park for a break.

Sorry, I don't know the process, but if a space on a form isn't large enough to describe your child's needs, then type them out on an extra sheet of paper with reference to which bit of the form they link to and write 'see attached description' on the form.

Do you meet the financial criteria? They have changed it fairly recently I believe and the list of benefits that make you eligible are smaller, not entirely sure which ones they accept though.