A Centrelink appointment ... for?

We visited Centrelink this morning to attend an appointment for people on disability pensions who are looking for less than a specified number of hours of work per week. At our last meeting with A-One's Disability Employment Services provider, A-One's target hours per week were recorded as 8-16.  He had received a phone call from Centrelink inviting him to attend an appointment to talk about how he's going; to make sure he's not falling through society's cracks; that he is making progress with his employment goals, and has some engagement with community.

A-One: I'm nervous about this appointment.  I hope they don't ask me any questions I'm uncomfortable with.

Mum: What type of questions might they be?

A-One: If they ask me what else I'm doing besides looking at emails for work.

Mum: How would you answer?

A-One: That I watch some TV, do some reading, play some X-Box games, play computer games.

From where I stand, he seemed to have reversed the order, but I let it pass. Instead I posed some questions he might get.

Mum: What about friends?

A-One: Yes, I talk to them.

Mum: How do you talk to them - call? email? Facebook?

A-One: Facebook.

Mum: When was the last time you talked to them?

A-One: It's been a little while.

Mum: How long is 'a little while'?  Before? After? Christmas?

A-One: After Christmas was the last time.

He observed the security people in the Centrelink office so we went on to discuss why they might be there, when his name was called.

The Centrelink officers were friendly, but the process for the interview seemed to be very perfunctory.  We were advised that this was a new initiative of the federal government, and that his participation was entirely voluntary; that they had a set list of questions to ask and that the outcome would be a plan which he would sign.  The timeframe for any plan could be long term, for example five years.

My impressions?  Accepting A-One's responses at face value with no insightful questioning as to what might really constitute barriers to employment.  In response to A-One's stated goal of becoming a sound engineer or assistant DJ, there was some brief discussion about a TAFE course, but they simply noted that A-One was not doing it. They stressed to A-One that he share his employment goals with his Disability Employment Services (DES) provider.  They gave A-One a glossy package containing a pen, a notebook, and a copy of his signed 'plan' which stated his employment goal which, as he said, is already on his resume anyway. I came away with the feeling that they could tick off another box in 'assisting' people; it seemed more like a bureaucratic overhead.

Our discussion on the way home seemed to provide more insight that I thought such an interview might have drawn out.

A-One: I don't  mind doing study that is hands on, like making sure that everything is connected properly, but I'd struggle if I had to do assignments that required writing.  Even games testing would be good, but I'd have difficulty writing reports of the tests.  There are problems with WOW, but I don't know if the WOW developers would think they are problems.

Mum: There's a website where you can submit problems with WOW - perhaps you could start small by practising reporting bugs there?

A-One: You see, in WOW my character is at level 90 and I've been trying to get a recipe for food for health - you can restore the health of your character with food.  It's at level 60, which should be really easy for me, but I've been trying for years to get it and still haven't - that's very frustrating. You see I like to collect full sets of things, and ...

... and so on for the rest of our trip home.

Pension cancelled!

A-One forgot to report his (zero) income to Centrelink for a couple of reporting periods, and received a letter advising him that his pension had been cancelled. I was aghast.

 

 

 

Earlier I had coached him to set up an alert on his iPod to remind him to report. When he lost his job and his reporting became zero, he had been managing the reporting OK. Despite my suggestion that he should advise Centrelink he no longer had a job (so that he didn't have to report any more), he hadn't taken me up on assisting him with the phone call. 

 

The letter prompted him to action.  Before he made the call to Centrelink, we practised what he could say. He pulled out the making phone calls 'recipe' I had written out for him some time ago.  He handled the call very well, which resulted in the reactivation of his pension (and no longer needing to report his income.)  Phew!

Phone calls, phone calls, phone calls

Finding the timing and pace of A-One's daily routine increasingly like nails on my internal blackboard, I took the opportunity to go out early for some Christmas shopping yesterday morning.  Once I got home, we had 3 activities to negotiate:

1. Follow up on A-Ones's laptop repair
2. Find out what to do when he's late with his employment reporting to Centrelink for his pension
3. Online brain training

A-One was very keen on his laptop repair because he didn't want to be without it over Christmas.  I was privately pleased that he seemed to have worked out how long until Christmas, demonstrating some sense of managing his time, but my husband told me later that he had told A-One he'd better find out what's happening before businesses shut down for the holiday season.

We rehearsed what he needed to say, and he handled the first call with some prompting from me.  He was told to expect a call back on his mobile in 10 minutes. 

I then wanted to start the second activity because our experience of Centrelink is that you can be on the phone for 30 minutes or longer before you get to speak to someone, and if it wasn't completed before close of business, it'd have to carry over until Monday.  I rang the number on our landline, but A-One became agitated and reached across and closed the call.

A-One: We can't call Centrelink yet because I'm waiting for a call back!

Mum: Yes, that might happen, but we'll handle it.  There are two of us, and we can take a call each if it comes to that.

A-One: No, I don't want to do that.

Mum: We'll run out of time if we don't kick off some of these things at the same time.

I called Centrelink again. Because this call was just about resetting his password which he's done several times before, I told him that if his mobile rings while he's on the phone to Centrelink, I'll answer his mobile.

As it turned out, he was on the phone to Centrelink when his mobile rang.  He looked at me anxiously until I answered his mobile.  While I was taking instructions on that call, he was fine handling the other call without me.  I completed my call while he was still on the phone trying to think up a new password.

After completing his call, at my prompting he logged in and found out that he could still report his employment for the lapsed period.  He needed my help to work out the numbers to enter for income and number of hours.   When he logged off, I suggested he put a repeating appointment in his iPod as a reminder for his employment reporting, and this time he acquiesced.  (I had suggested it a fortnight ago, but he didn't want to know about it.)

He was very keen to know what happened in my phone call about his laptop, so I stepped him through what he needed to do.  Again, we rehearsed what he would say and listed the two things he needed from the call.  While making the call, he frequently looked at me for guidance on what to say, and after completing the call, checked with me about what he had just done.

The topics of backups arose.

A-One: If I lose all my data, that would be terrible.

Mum: Yes, that's what backups are for.

A-One: I've never done a backup; I didn't really know how to do it.

Mum: Sometimes it's worth finding out how to do something to avoid something worse. What do you think?

A-One: If I haven't lost all my data I'll do a backup as soon as I get my laptop back.

To assist him with his employment reporting, I wrote out a table showing his income for the number of days and hours he worked, which can vary.  I showed it to him, asking if he'd find it helpful to put that in his iPod too so that he can refer to it next time.  He decided it was, and proceeded to enter it. 
On completing it he checked with me if it was correct, so I told him how he could check it himself using the rate per hour. 

We also had a discussion about the start and finish days of the reporting period, so that he knew which days to count.  Initally he didn't understand that, but I could see his aha! moment when he gave a correct example of which days were in which reporting period.

There was still another phone call to make about his laptop, so we rehearsed that, and he again handled the call with prompting from me.

After observing where he needed help with these activities, I wrote out a 'recipe' for making phone calls, similar to the 'Baked Fish and Vegetables' step-by-step recipe that I'd previously written out for him and which he'd used successfully.   We can use it for the next phone call.

Later on he did his online brain training.  I was out of the room when he called out to me.

A-One: Hey mum!  I just got a PB for Raindrops!

(Raindrops is the mental arithmetic problem solving game.)

Mum: That's great!  How did the others go?

A-One: I got 3 PBs!

I was left wondering whether working through the arithmetic for his employment reporting constituted a 'warm-up' for his brain training.  Did he just need to get those neural pathways warmed up?

On an A-One scale, we accomplished a fair bit today.  When he is motivated, he becomes a delight to work with.