Tag Archive for benefit

Looking towards the future

Part of me as a person, is someone who works and earns my own money. Being on benefits for me is a failure of my ability to do this.

I am currently in a position that I am reliant on the help that they offer. I am home looking after my two children, now on my own after my relationship broke down earlier this year.

But I want to do more……

It is not that I do not love being at home, or that I don’t love my children, but I need more. I have a strong work ethic and I want to be able to support my children more and allow them to have nicer things.

My career before my sight started to deteriorate was in design, a career that yes I could have continued with with the correct support, but one that I felt that my heart had fallen out of.

I have also worked within administration and with charities that deal with sight loss. But although I ave an eye condition and I enjoy the volunteer roles that I have with Open Sight and Guide dogs, my sight is just part of me.

So time to look to the future and to see what I can do for my next career.

Last year I started this ball rolling by doing a taster course in counselling. I fell in love with it as a subject and as a possible career move. And despite my initial concerns my sight loss has no affect on me being able to support others. It just means that I need to do things in a slightly different way.

This year I have been working towards my ABC certificate in counselling. Class makes up just 4 hours with 8 hours at home, however for me this is more like 12.

Studying and all that comes with it has been a learning curve in more ways that just the subject! I have learnt a lot about how and when I can use my eye’s and sight to get the most out of them, without creating negativities for myself.

An example of this, is using the computer. As I have said before, I am a Mac user and as such, have a MacBook Pro and iPad. Both of which offer fabulous accessibility as standard. (maybe thats another blog in the making!) But when I can use my Macs is becoming limited.

If I want to be able to close my eyes and wind them down to sleep, I must not be using them after 9pm in the evening. Even with the speech software, I still try to use my remaining sight, its a natural reflex. If I have reading to do, this must be done even earlier in the evening or preferably during the day.

So, study is nothing like the all-night, stopping only to use the loo sessions that I had when at university just 10 years ago. Which is a real marker for me of the deterioration that has occurred.

So, my work is done with an hour here, an hour there and also a stopwatch. Because as with most people when I am deep into something, time can run away with me and with my eye’s I do not feel the affects immediately, but it is often a few hours after.

But this has not put me off.

Just this week, went in the application for the DipHe in Counselling. Its a whole day at Eastleigh with 2 1/2 days of home study. The ‘perk’ of this course is that I can apply for assistance in the form of a scribe for the time in college. I can also apply for a grant to help me to upgrade my Mac, to a larger screen as my existing mac is becoming a struggle. Its not going to be easy. This I am in no doubt about, but this is where I want to be.

So, as I can no longer do late night studying, I will have to give VERY early mornings a trial instead.

Employment and support allowance

Having suffered with my employer and my depression caused by my continued battle with getting to grips with my deteriorating eye condition and having to learn to use a new form of accessible software that I didn’t feel ready for, I had been on long term sick leave since October 2012. In February this year, after a lot of thinking, adjustments and not very successful adjustments, I was let go from my position on medical grounds.

This did not in fact cause me any great upset, as I had come to the conclusion that my current role was not the one for me.

It was the thought of accepting my eye condition and applying for the government benefit, for people like me who are unable to work…. Employment and Support allowance, often referred to as ESA. Read more

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