Welfare Rights
Whilst the Coming To Life website is primarily designed to provide emotional and psychological resources, there are a number related areas which are too important to be left out. One of these is that of benefits and welfare rights
The reason that benefits and welfare rights are listed here is because a large majority of the most severely traumatized people are not able to work as much, or to the same level, as they would have had the they not been living with the devastating biological, neurological and psychological effects of what has been done to them.
This means that their income is usually significantly lower than it would otherwise have been. This negatively impacts on the quality of their life, making for far fewer resources, options and choices.
Here in the UK there are a number of benefits that are designed to assist people whose disability means that their life options are reduced. Below is some brief information - but please note that statistics show that you are up to 10x more likely to be awarded a benefit that you are entitled to if you have an experienced advisor from an impartial organisation such as the Citizens Advice Bureau help you fill the form in.
If you have come to this website because you are searching for help with your recovery, then you are likely to be entitled to financial help.
The most vulnerable and stigmatised people often pay a financial premium for having a low income. The Family-Action charity has produced a pdf with information about some of these hidden costs.
Family-action
Mind - the largest mental health charity in the UK is tackling the new benefits reforms and their web page has both information and links
www.mind.org.uk
Disability Living Allowance (DLA)
This is a benefit that is designed to improve the quality of your life by acknowledging your difficulties and making more choices available to you. It was originally set up as a way to assist people whose lives are curtailed by physical, emotional or psychological ill health to be able to have a life that more nearly approaches that of someone without disabilities.
However one of the problems with DLA is that currently the questions on the application form do not address many of the issues that adult survivors are actually living with. This makes them hard to fill in as they are asking the wrong questions.
Also the ways of coping many people developed in order to survive their childhood may mean that they have become used to living a curtailed life of deprivation and cannot readily recognize other, healthier, life possibilities.
Both of these together mean that those in recovery from childhood abuse often do not get the support that they need, and are fully entitled to, even with professional assistance in filling in the form.
Many people are also put off by the length of the form and it is not unusual to take quite a while, often weeks or more, to fill it in - again specialist help is really useful.
It can also be very uncomfortable to share what your life is really like, and many survivors have an inbuilt mechanism for appearing OK - after all that is how they survived - which means that their symptoms may often be masked.
For example a woman survivor may always wash her hair, iron her clothes and have make-up on when she goes out for half a day - and yet then have to spend the two following days in bed recovering from the effects of just half a day out - yet anyone who saw her out and about would not know about this and believe from her appearance that she was 100% OK.
Many survivors also feel incredible shame and distress about not being able to work fully and find it really hard to ask for any kind of help including financial. This is often especially true until they realize that it is not their fault that their income is low and that they really do need the help in order to recover and at last have a chance at a life.
And some people are too unwell to ever fill in the application forms and silently slip through the cracks.
The Citizens Advice Bureau, and now also some GP surgeries, can help you with filling in the form, however if you minimize the difficulties in your life they will not be able to help you fill in the form as best as possible.
Also users of the project consistently report that they have a hard time getting heard at their GP's surgery, and also at the CAB, as the current societal avoidance of the issues around miss-parenting and the resultant childhood trauma are too hot for many to go near.
Further info is coming here to help with getting DLA & other benefits which you may be entitled to, however contacting your Local CAB is usually a useful first step.