Bureaucracy

We spend some of our time just helping people get round unhelpful bureaucracy. Take Mark - he is a really nice genuine, intelligent person. Unfortunately about eight years ago he was knocked down by a drunk driver. After being in a coma for a number of months he woke up and has been left with brain damage. This means he has problems with his memory and comes across as confused at times.

Someone had suggested to him he might be entitled to more benefits so he went to see a welfare rights adviser. She must have been having problems getting from him more detailed information about his brain damage and its effects as she asked him to give permission to his GP to talk to her about his brain damage. So Mark visited his GP to say please talk to this welfare rights advisor for me. Unfortunately the GP asked him for a letter saying that the GP had permission to share this information.

Now I know the GP probably needed some kind of proof that Mark had given his permission, but asking him to write a letter was totally unrealistic. He has brain damage and was not going to manage to do this. So he popped in to see us, I spoke to him and after a bit of discussion I realised what he wanted. I quickly typed a letter on my computer, he signed it and delivered it to his Dr. But the situation should never have happened in the first place.