Contact CAB for financial advice if you are shielding
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As part of its response to Covid-19, the government contacted many people across Sutherland to advise them that they should strictly follow shielding measures.
Shielding is a measure to protect people who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus, by minimising all interactions between them and others.
In Scotland this advice was due to remain in place at least until today.
In many cases, those who are shielding live with long term ill health or disability.
If you or a loved one has been shielding, and are not already in receipt of financial support to help with the extra costs of having a long term illness or disability, you or they, may be eligible to apply for Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment or Attendance Allowance.
These are non means tested benefits, so don’t take in to account any earnings or savings you have. These benefits are designed to ease the financial burden that can come with managing a long term condition or disability. If you’d like to find out more about what is involved in making a claim for any of these benefits contact the bureau now.
If you are already in receipt of any of these benefits, you will be aware the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) regularly assess and review these payments.
Due to the Covid-19 restrictions the DWP have suspended some of these reviews and reassessments. This is a temporary measure and for the time being, existing awards are being automatically extended.
Both James Sutherland and I, as senior welfare rights advisers, would like to encourage anyone who would ordinarily be due for a review of their existing award of Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment or Attendance Allowance to contact the bureau now, for help and support.
We want to support as many people as possible to make new applications, or help people renew existing awards. The bureau remains open and we have a process in place to manage these requests by telephone and email when they are received. When the DWP remove the temporary extensions we expect to have a huge increase in demand for our welfare rights service and our limited resources will only stretch so far, so please consider contacting us now for help and support and as always we’ll do our very best to help.
