Pip

 

As a professional engineer I pay for services that allow me to perform to my highest competency for my employers and clients. My professional status is denoted not only in my pre-and post nominal Designations- Dr For my PhD and CEng As a charted engineer, and MIChemE As a charted chemical engineer, but also bye my attitude and behaviours . Over the past 30 years, I have found many entrepreneur and flexible professionals To work with. All of them are hard-working and creative people. In them, I see the qualities I was raised in. As a parent with a commitment to my professional career, The majority of that spend Has been on childcare. For the first five years half of my take-home salary, went on just paying the nursery let alone all the services I needed around that situation. And this I facilitated by selling up and moving to a much cheaper home in a much cheaper area. And by luck, or skill, I angain encountered brilliant entrepreneurial, creative professionals making it work. A brilliant local businesswoman whose Service collected children before School, took them into childcare, and the childcare then delivered them to School and back round again for an after-school care. A Service that offered overnight stays and days out for the children during school holidays. Yesterday I had the difficult and challenging experience of needing to call upon services I have for years paid for but not needed to draw upon. Coincidentally my child has finally obtained 16 years of age and now instead of disability living allowance I need to do my best by him by applying for personal independence payments. And with this has come an avalanche of adverts on my social media encouraging me to apply not just for PIP but all of the linked entitled benefits. And as it happens, my driver yesterday makes most of his money from local authority contracts. From Pip recipients, And he’s one of their linked entitled benefit benefits. Our journey was a long one, so I learned a great deal about the social contracts. I am encouraged by Social media advert to apply for the carers allowance, Reflecting the time I spend providing the necessarysupport to my disabled child. And for elements that I am entitled to associated with the mobility element of PIP. I learned last night, that instead of engaging the entrepreneur and creative professionals to collect and deliver my child between school and nursery, and childcare and after-school clubs, I could invite engage a personal private driver linked to the mobility element of the PIP. As a single mum and a child of a disability, there is apparently a safeguarding clause Meaning that children living a short distance away from the village School and homes in the same village are being driven. By pandering to this, and by signing up to the entitled linked benefits, we are robbing our children of the exercise of walking to School. We are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to participate in a rewarding career and we are robbing a culture of the mindset of creating work and delivering services that generate prosperity and generating a sense of community . It feels as though we are being encouraged by some unseen force to relinquish all of our freedoms in exchange for apparent pampering. As a child of parents raised by single parents in council homes who worked hard all of their lives with long commutes I believe that opportunity often comes dressed up as hard work. See through the lie see who is truly benefiting in this society I don’t take the shiny penny from the nice man. It’s a con.