Marianne Talbot Nine months before mum went into her home, the council granted me direct payments of £403 per week.
I was at breaking point. The direct payments were supposed to help. It was the direct payments, though, that broke me.
Anyway, with mum settled, I wrote to the council, asked them to stop the payments, audit my accounts, and take back the £4,000 still sitting in my account because of my fear of spending the money during the two-month lag between the payments being awarded and actually starting.
The payments stopped - useful proof they'd received my letter - but nothing else happened. So £4,000 of council money has been doing nothing in my account for six months.
A month ago I had reason to speak to the head of social services. So I mentioned this sorry story. Well! See what going to the top gets you. Almost immediately I heard from the direct payments team.
Not just from the gofers either. Oh no. I got an email from the chap in charge. He suggested a meeting so he could tell me what was going on.
I immediately thought, 'oh dear, he's going to try to convince me how wonderful the system is, when what I want is to tell him how and why, for me at least, the system didn't 'work'. I emailed him to that effect (more politely I hope!). He assured me he wanted to hear from me.
But he didn't. His enthusiasm for the council's work on direct payments was palpable. He is totally committed to it. And wonderful he makes it sound. They're going to change this, re-jig that, re-brand this and make sure of that. It all sounds just dandy.
By nature I am the very opposite of cynical. But having been a carer for 12 years I have been through several 'new dawns'. I haven't seen one of them change things for carers, except at the edges, and then often negatively.
It's not that the new ideas are no good. If they were actually implemented, competently, consistently, fully, and within sensible time scales, they would make a huge difference. But they are often not implemented at all because another new initiative arrives hot on the heels... And if they are implemented it is at break-neck speed, so those actually implementing them can't even wrap their minds around them, never mind their practice.
I find enthusiasm enormously appealing, but I wasn't convinced.
But here's something impressive: last night a man from the council arrived (by appointment), took away everything relating to direct payments, and promised to sort them out for me.
Now that's service!