By Lynne

My eldest daughter was born with a condition known as Achondroplasia. Most people know it as Dwarfism. She’s a teenager now but is only three and a half feet tall, has short limbs, and she suffers a lot of pain in her back and legs due to her spine not being straight. She’s a lovely girl and does her best to get on with life but her condition obviously makes many things the rest of us take for granted very difficult for her.

The most obvious thing is that she uses a wheelchair when she goes to school. She can walk but gets sore and tired if she tries to go too far and, as many people with disabilities know, she has good days and bad days. But even on her good days she doesn’t like going out on her own. Being small, she feels vulnerable in crowds and some people can be pretty horrible to anyone they see as not being what they regard as normal. But it’s not just that. Even simple things like climbing onto buses can be awkward when there’s a wide gap and you’ve only got short legs.

Life at home isn’t that much better. She can’t climb into or out of a bath without help and she can’t wash herself all over because her arms don’t reach. She even struggles to wash and brush her own hair and tie her shoe laces.

Cooking a meal for herself is out of the question because she’s so small she’d need to stand on a stool or stepladder to reach the top of the cooker and her arms don’t have the reach or the strength to lift a hot pot. Even if they did, can you imagine lifting a pot of hot food and trying to climb down from a stool or ladder while holding it? It’s the same with lifting anything hot out of an oven or even a microwave. It’s not only difficult, it’s dangerous.

My daughter goes to our local secondary school who have been very supportive of her special needs but there have still been some practical issues. For example, she wanted to study sciences but there were very real Health & safety concerns over her ability to use lab equipment safely.

So life’s not easy for her or the rest of our family but we try to make the best of it. One thing that helped was that she qualified for Disability Living Allowance from the age of 3. This helped pay for adaptations to the house and for equipment and gadgets which allowed her to do as many things for herself as possible. It also helps cover the cost of alterations to every article of clothing she buys because nothing off the rack fits her.

The problem we now face is that, when she turned 16 she had to apply for the new Personal Independence Payment, PIP, to replace her DLA. With the help of our Local Council Advice Shop, we sent in an application for PIP a few months ago.

After six weeks or so, a lady from ATOS turned up to see my daughter and the special arrangements we’ve made to help her around the house. The lady was quite friendly and reasonable but said she needed to send in a report which the DWP would review.

So we waited.

And waited.

After four months of hearing nothing, I called the DWP to ask what was happening. I was told that they couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard anything and that they’d look into it for me. The next day I got a phone call telling me my daughter did not qualify for PIP at all. She will receive no money. Not a penny.

I know the newspapers keep going on about Benefits fraud and the Government clamping down so that Benefits are only paid where they are needed but how they can say that someone with a debilitating and permanent disability doesn’t deserve any help at all is beyond me. I am f***ing furious!

So we’ve requested what they call a Mandatory Reconsideration before we get to an Appeal. The Advice Shop staff couldn’t believe the application had been turned down and neither can anyone who knows my daughter.

I’m still hoping the DWP will change their mind but even if they do, this is an awful way to treat a vulnerable teenager and her family and I want as many people as possible to hear about how this Tory Government is treating disabled people. To the DWP my daughter might be just another statistic but she’s a person who deserves a bit of respect and, because of her condition, needs a little extra help to live as normal a life as possible. Is that so much to ask?