Power Up!! Boss Round Complete.

Well, the campaign has been long and arduous, and somewhat irritating to say the least.

Irritating mainly because I could have done what I just have right from the outset. 4 long years of complaining , pissing off officials and various other creative ways of showing my annoyance at the state of Social Care in this country.

When I began, I was pretty much on my knees scraping poop (and worse) on social care benefits without a penny in my pocket and not a friend in the world. I'd grown suicidal, trapped caring for a disabled woman unassisted in impoverished conditions. The accommodation we were in was completely unacceptable, how the other tenants in the block put up with excrement on the stairs, vermin, and garbage bags gutted by the swarming seagulls strewn over the path I'll never know. I complained enough, as well as at the ripped up treadways and the general state of the block the local council never got around to repairing.

* Point of note, I drove past the old property today on the way back from golf. Despite the council's haste to re-let it after redecorating inside, it is still empty two months later. No surprises there then, nobody mad enough wants to live there.

Well after said campaign I now have a workshop to build my Secret Laboratory in, turning up in a couple of days.

Muahahahahah!

It will be outfitted with complete Faraday shielding donated by the now defunct #The House Of Fun which I will not be needing. A pity, it would have been epic. But never mind. It has a supercomputer, and live streaming from several cameras, RGB LED lighting and a slab. More on this later...

Thanks must go to Hackaday itself for enabling all this, I should say. And of course to all my friends, followers, fans, and critics, who gave me a reason. Worth it, so worth it. Thank you all. :-D

Is that not all then? Well no, of course not.

I have a brand new house for Bea, complete with a decent sized garden to put my workshop in, and a jumbo trampoline for her that Social Services grumpily paid for to replace the one they lost her. That was one of the things they knew wouldnt fly so I rather impudently requested the biggest b*d I could fit in the garden.

Bea loves it.

So what have I done then?

Well, now I've rifled about as much as I can out of Igor's pocketses with a free tentacle while I had a grasp on the slimy little toad, he's fired. Quite literally dispensed with. That brings the grand total to

1 local council, 1 county council, 1 benefits agency, 2 social workers, 1 NHS GP service, 1 NHS mental health service, a rack of experts in care, another in autism spectrum disorders, several independent psychiatrists, a magistrate, two ombudsmen and a psycho ex.

And a Social Services Manager.

I'm not eating that, I have my standards. ;-)

There exists a thing called Direct Payment. This is where Central Gov pay a disabled person directly to manage their own care. It isnt common, the idea is Social Services provide for us democratically, and those with needs that cant be supplied by the one-size-fits-all blanket of ignorance that actually resolves to can be paid via a trustee account to manage and provide their own carers.

Well, moving out of that rathole and among decent folk all looking for a fresh start meant I quickly met someone prepared to help me and Bea out, coincidentally a registered carer looking for work. And of course she knows others too. So, on top of the existing agency care for weekends, I now have a couple of PA's that I employ myself, paid out of a trustee account by central without oversight by Social Services.

I'm an employer. I have a couple of PA's and a temp to help me and Bea while I tinker in my Secret Laboratory, paid by the government while I hack. I have an independent broker manage the tax and national insurance contributions on commission, and I have complete autonomy.

Yep, I wander about with goggle face, Bea's looked after properly and I got her trampoline and my workshop back.