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Disability Allowance - What is the current position?


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I might be wrong, but I think there used to be a very long thread on here discussing the legalities of receiving DLA in France etc. Is it still accessible? Some people were appealing to the European Court. Cooperlola was involved in this.

It could have been about Incapacity Benefit.

Also there have been changes in the rules for entitlement for one or both of these benefits, and people are being called for re-assessment

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Chancer : I don't think you would normally get Carers allowance if you are a pensioner : http://www.carersuk.org/help-and-advice/help-with-money/benefits-a-tax-credits/carer-benefits-for-pensioners

I'll see what I can find but I think the person with the disability may be still be entitled to Attendance allowance : http://www.carersuk.org/help-and-advice/help-with-money/benefits-a-tax-credits/dla-and-aa/all-about-attendance-allowance?highlight=YTozOntpOjA7czoxMDoiYXR0ZW5kYW5jZSI7aToxO3M6OToiYWxsb3dhbmNlIjtpOjI7czoyMDoiYXR0ZW5kYW5jZSBhbGxvd2FuY2UiO30=

Basically once your mobility is impaired life can get a whole lot more difficult and that can be expensive, and I don't mean mobility in the sense of a mobility scooter or car, but day to day stuff..able to stand to make a cup of tea, cook, walk to the toilet, have a shower, get up stairs, open the door to callers etc

Hasn't Norman worked in France long enough for him to qualify for help under the French system ?

As for this lady, I think she has ben ill advised to move abroad if her condition is so bad that she qualifies for the allowances that she is claiming and on first sight at least would seem to have her head in the clouds...but thats just me...I'm far more cautious and if I was going to have to ask for help/be ill I'd like to do it in my native language, in a system I have a chance of understanding.

 

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I manage ok, and bought my scooter myself from a great contact given me by Copperlola bless her.

I am sure I am not entitled to any help from the UK unless I returned there and I am not complaining about that. I chose to move to France and I am in the system here which is different but has its plusses and minusses.

What I was surprised about in my earlier post was that people who move to another country full-time still receive assistance from the UK.

I had assumed that you left all that behind and took the rough with the smooth.

As Chancer says this is nothing to do with this lady's plight which sounds as if it may be the start of a cautionary tale, and I think she is very fortunate to have Q to help.

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Having just got back and read some of the different posts and going away a bit from the original subject I can answer a couple of questions raised.

Firstly my parents have been dead for over 15 years. Both got carers allowance as it was back 20 odd years ago and they were both drawing and old age pension and my father had a private pension as well. At that time I believe there were no financial restrictions on who did or didn't get it you simply needed a form from and signed by the doctor. In my parents case it was the doctor who instigated the payment. In more recent times I believe the whole system has changed and this would not happen now.

I believe I am right in saying that the mobility allowance is for a leased car that is modified for the recipient and the cars are changed every year (personally I always thought it was three years but there you go). These cars were supplied by private specialised companies who took over once the old three wheel blue invalid cars were scrapped. If I am wrong, which I may be, I am sure somebody else will correct me. I also believe the mobility allowance can be used for other forms of transport if the person does not or cannot drive like taxis etc.

As for France the best I could find is that you must have been resident for at least a year. People over 65 get a different allowance which can only reach a maximum of 80% of the allowance available to those who become disabled whilst of working age. All these things in France are means tested but thats about as far as I got.

As too this particular lady, who is not a friend by the way, all I can say is the more I think about it and the more I find out I come to the conclusion she is pretty stupid really. She should never have come to France in the first place and she certainly either didn't do her 'homework' before she came (else she would not have come) or received incredibly bad advice. My problem is, contrary to what some may think, that I am not that 'hard' and am trying to help her if she will allow herself to be helped that is. Basically, morally, I can't bring myself to turn my back and walk away if anyone can understand what I mean. I keep telling myself I have my own health problems as well as a business and they should come first yet when somebody is right up shitstreet (sorry) what can you do, you can't ignore them.

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I think, also, that the motability scheme is supported by car manufacturers (or, at least, dealerships) and you effectively lease a car under the scheme from a dealer much as you would lease any other car, except that help with the costs comes via your mobility allowance.

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[quote user="Russethouse"]My mother has a 'crumbling spine' ( which of course covers a multitude of sins) she now cannot stand unaided and has to have numerous aids and two carers four times a day....unfortunately my feeling is that the best thing this lady can do is turn right around and go back to the UK or get in the system......the future may be far from rosy as it is, without the added problems of not having the S1 and /or being poverty stricken.....sorry to be negative. What a pickle![/quote]

RH, I don't know why nobody has picked up this point of yours which you made very succinctly and unambiguously right at the beginning of this thread.

Sometimes, there's just no way to gild a pill, is there? (sigh)

What I'm a bit curious about and I don't know if Q can enlighten us is this:  how did a person of her disability manage to have moved herself to France?

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I am unable to read a vast percentage of what is writte on this page which is a real shame, it happened after russethouse posted a link that wrapped over the line thereafter I cannot see the RHS of most of the postings except ironically another one of hers.

This frequently happens, it usually repairs itself on the next page, changing the zoom level does nothing, I thinks its to do with all that space at the side being given over to adverts.

anyone else with this problem or know how to get over it?

Editted, this has posted on a new page and its fine, the one before is unreadable including the posts before the culprit one (sorry RH it wasnt your fault) which were readable before.

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[quote user="sweet 17"]

What I'm a bit curious about and I don't know if Q can enlighten us is this:  how did a person of her disability manage to have moved herself to France?

[/quote]

I don't have a clue. What I have seen is hundreds of carrier bags stuffed full of stuff which would be handy for a 'bring and buy' sale. That said we bought far to much when we moved and given what I know now I would have sold most of it and bought over here. Hindsight however is a wonderful thing.

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Chancer, I too sometimes have this problem...sometimes clicking on reply reveals the whole post..

Sweet, Everyone is different,(this lady's condition may not be so severe, though the fact she has these allowances makes me wonder) but my mothers mobility decreased gradually  especially after she reached 80....eventually she had a fall and ended up in hospital...she had been pulling herself up from chairs, the bed etc using other furniture, but this wasn't good enough for the physio's..she couldn't push herself up so she didn't really stand for a while and then her muscles wasted.....she insisted on going to her own home so she lives in one room of the house and is moved from bed to chair and then chair to bed at night...she is 93 now, pretty deaf and her sight is failing...she doesn't have Alzheimers, but her memory is not what it was and some days we have 'circular' conversations where no sooner have we finished than she asks the same question or makes the same comment again.....its a miserable life...the thought of coping with in a country where your first language is not spoken and you are not au fait with the system, even when totally in your right mind, seems like a perverse sort of hell to me.

Depending on this ladies financial position (if she could afford a live in carer for example) and where in the Uk she comes from, going back might not be a decent option for very long.....

Very sad...maybe she is hoping for a few good years before she gets too bad and who could blame her...who knows...

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An update. Well I have told her what she needs to register in France and where she needs to go, I even offered to take her there as her car will not arrive in France for a couple of more months. I have a feeling this is not going to happen. She has spoken to a friend who lives in the UK who knows France well, they spend a couple of weeks here each year and the friend has advised her not to enter the French system, to use her sisters UK address for correspondence and if she needs medical attention to use her European health card.

So I have fixed her computer, got her online and told her what to do and the rest is now up to her. As somebody said you can take a horse to water etc. I have a bad feeling about all this as I have said more than once and I don't think it will end well. I have given her my phone number and said that if she hits a problem and providing it does not interfere with my business I will do my best to help her and have left it at that.

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[quote user="Cendrillon"]oh dear, this does not bode well![8-)]
[/quote]

Well I don't know how things stand these days but I would have thought it would pay her to be resident, especially tax resident. Her house has single glazing, no insulation and a very small open fire. I would have thought that she would be able to get some financial help via a tax rebate for improving the insulation. She is going to insulate the loft this year and probably double glaze next year and as she can't do it herself will use French artisans and that will not be cheap. She is currently looking at a wood burner. I know you used to get a tax rebate on wood burner instalation because we got one but it was around ten years ago and I don't know what has changed. The other question is where is all the money coming from, the sale of her UK home I assume because she constantly pleads poverty. I don't know what to make of it I really don't and as you say none of it bodes well.

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Was this lady a Place in the Sun Wannabee?

Quillan you are right to think that if she made herself legal and resident she would probably qualify for the tax rebates on home improvements assuming her house is of a certain age.

To be thinking she can claim U.K. benefits / allowances via her sister's address is madness, a head in the sand case if ever there was one!

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 I think that I would have no further contact with this woman. Sounds like you have done enough. What if you ended up translating for her for something official and you knew she was lying......how would you stand legally?

Re the tax residency, well if she got a wood burner installed now, she wouldn't get the tax money back until late summer 2015 and that is a long way off.

She should realise that her impots locaux will be more expensive as a non resident too especially if she has a small income.

Yes, I'd certainly be giving her a wide berth.

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You made me laugh Idun, me a translator, I don't think so. I openly admit I slaughter the language and one thing I would never do is put myself forward as a translator even in jest. When I said I offered to take her to the CPAM office I meant exactly that and nothing more as it is a pig of a place to get to if you don't have a car, the rest would be down to her. To be honest I can't see myself doing the trip, it just won't happen as I believe she has no intention of going.
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[quote user="Quillan"]

 She has spoken to a friend who lives in the UK who knows France well, they spend a couple of weeks here each year and the friend has advised her not to enter the French system, to use her sisters UK address for correspondence and if she needs medical attention to use her European health card.[/quote]

That will probably work out for her regarding the health cover but as for the other benefits and possible medical assessments, it doesnt sound like she can hop back to the UK at the drop of a hat like I could.

Regarding the comment about not being able to translate for her, I completely understand but remember that to someone who speaks little or no French your massacring of the language or whatever you called it will be seen to be fluency!

When I was at your level and trying hard English people would say in a very off hand way, "its alright for you, you are fluent" and then at the first problem want to drag me along to translate, my way out of it was to say I would do my best to try and understand what was being said in French and explain that to them in English but under no circumstances were they to ask me to reply to anything, for that they needed a French native speaker who spoke good English.

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Chancer. I may be missing something, but how on earth is going to work out for her?

A gradually crumbling spine is hardly going to be an emergency and she risks being totally imobile surely ?

Still, you pays your money and takes your choice, but I don't especially warm to the thought of someone who has so purposefully ignored the rules and regs having the use of my hard earned to get her out of trouble ( and that's the polite version!)
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In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king, is that what you're thinking Chancer? Personally I would put more as the blind leading the blind in my case. Dont' get me wrong I can have conversations with my French mates (who put up with my slaughtering of their language) but anything like tax, hospital etc I refer to a professional translator as it is to serious to get wrong. As to how long she will stay, well I don't have a clue. Probably as you say until she needs some serious hospital care, loses her drugs and need replacements or something like that.

She told me she would be going back every three months to get a prescription for her drugs, one of which is morphine patches. I was surprised you could get three months worth of morphine patches in one go but then having never (knowingly) had morphine I wouldn't know. Her prescriptions are free I assume but it is an expensive way to get one especially as you move into the tourist season when airfares become really expensive.

She is a vegetarian as well and this part of France considers vegetarians to be those that eat white meat, they are somewhat behind the times as it were although things have improved over the last couple of years.

I don't think she understands the climate either. Thought it cold when it dropped to around 3 deg, I pointed out that we are having (so far) another mild winter as typically being just over 1,000 ft up temperatures can get down to -10 without much effort or even lower. There is also the summer to cope with, mid July to mid September typically have temperatures of 36 to 40 deg. That is without talking about the rain which we get a reasonable amount of late winter and most of spring. As I pointed out it is very green round here.

Anyway it's not my business and not my concern now. You make your bed and you have to lay in it as they say. I hope it does work out well for her although I can't see it myself but then you never know.

RH - I don't think she is a scrounger but she is trying to play the system. Technically I suppose you could call it fraud (well it is really) but only because she is very aware that by moving to France she would not be entitled to some of the money she currently gets. If she stayed in the UK she would be quite 'legal'. Seems to me she bought the house first then started on her research afterwards.

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