i recently was advised by my BCN to apply for the grant,as im off work, and only on SSP. as a way of getting some funding for the extra travel incurred, hat wear, and increased heating bills that have accured due to having my diagnosis.
Well it was so fast and a chq arived today. anyway your allowed to cash this straight away with proof of id, at any Natwest branch.
so off i went, really happy that somethink had gone right and the extra money would really help as im on SSP.
they hadnt got a clue what the chq was, and why i thought i could cash it, so i showed the cashier the leter showing in black and white that i could with ID cash, still no, she rang head office appently and said no again. So i asked to see the manager, i felt myself getting very red , embarrssed and annoyed.
I was explained to by the manager that the chq i was presenting was from the wrong account, and that macmillan had made an eror and would need to reissue me with a chq. !! no way would they have made this eror i explained, they write cheques all the time for grants and i cant believe that if this is an isue it hasnt been raised before. then i left.
got to my car and burst out crying. how silly of me. rang macmillian who were fab, they calmed me down, put me through to the benefits team who rang me back to save my phone bill, and then assured me they would get to the bottom of this unaccetable issue.
within an hour he had rang back telling me it was all sorted and the bank were looking at old instructions, and i can re present it tommorow and have it cashed.
I was in the same situation as you and I also found Macmillan’s team wonderful.
My local branch were also looking at an old instruction. I phoned Macmillans who sorted it all out for me.
I cannot thank and praise Macmillans enough for all they have done for me during the past “challenging” years. their advice and help was invaluable. They helped sort out my benefits, travel costs, and even gave me a washing machine- because I didn’t have one.
i would have taken my bed and moved to to our mcmillan centre if i could have. the atmosphere is wonderful so calm and the people staff and volunteers included are fantastic
sue x
My breast care nurse rang me to say they did all the Macmillan forms for you if you needed to apply for a grant with help for travel to radiotherapy (I had a round trip of 50 miles a day for 25 sessions). I wasn’t able to apply for anything as I was a bit over the savings threshold.
I was registered as unemployed when I was diagnosed, but not receiving JSA - this meant I couldn’t get Incapacity Benefit and I was turned down for DLA. However, when I told Macmillan my OH had just become self employed prior to my diagnosis, they advised us to try for tax credits. We were turned down first time, so Macmillan told us to reapply and what to put on the forms. We managed to get £96 a week which was a godsend as we’d had no real income for about 7 months. I don’t know what I would have done without the advise they gave me and I didn’t even contact them direct - I left a comment on their website about how hard the benefits system can be when you are ill.
I found the DWP didn’t volunteer any info about many things when I was ill. They didn’t even tell me I had been turned down for Incapacity and I had to chase my application up months down the line. It had gone round 5 different offices starting in Preston and ending up in Glasgow - in between it went to my 2 local Jobcentre offices and another in Stirling. It was like nobody was willing to make a decision. They then omitted to send me the official rejection letter and I found out over the phone 2 weeks after it was alleged to have been sent out.
I also had somebody at a DWP call centre in Edinburgh tell me that breast cancer was not an excuse for trying to access benefits, which really upset me, especially as a GP in my practice had told them it was his opinion I was not sick enough for DLA (at one point I was bedridden for almost 4 months!)