Hello.
I am self employed with secondary progressive MS finding it increasingly hard to do my work. There is lots of advice about what to do if you are in work but can find little about what happens when I can’t do my job so well. Is that it? do i just stop?
If I had some support assistance I could do my work but many clients likely wouldn’t pay for additional costs incurred. I need help with carrying and moving and driving. I travel abroad regularly and this is also getting harder.
anyone had any experience with this?
I don’t want to stop work yet that would be the worst thing.
best wishes
Hi, wonder if a social services assessment might help.
They do pay for carers via direct payments, in my case.
Not sure if this would be of use to you.
Why not ring and ask.
polllx
Hi
It’s worth getting in touch with Access to work too. If you’ve not heard of it, it’s a DWP service to help people with disabilities to do their work. I don’t know if they’d be able to pay for an assistant, but they should be able to give you an assessment & see in what ways they can support you.
Dan
I was self-employed and got the sack from my last contract, I was pretty upset having completed contract work for over 10yrs but I was starting to struggle and contracting in financial services, it was always pretty competitive, you were expected to do a high volume of work at a very accurate rate. I just couldn’t do it anymore…
I applied to my personal pension provider and my old occupational scheme for early retirement on grounds of ill health as I really didn’t think I could do my old job. I’d be limited on what I can do given mobility and vision problems - can I ask what you do? There are definitely differences, I might be unable to carry out my old job and that’s different to unable to work at all. Do you have any pension arrangements?
I’ve just trying to get it sorted now but it’s taking ages. There isn’t a simple way to get advice on this and I’ve had to pay a financial adviser to proceed with it all. I’ve not applied for ESA yet but need to as taking pensions in my mid 40’s has knocked the values down a lot.
Good luck
Sonia x