Page 1 of 1 [ 7 posts ] 

nobodyzdream
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Apr 2007
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,267
Location: St. Charles, MO-USA

10 May 2007, 10:36 am

does anybody else have a REALLY hard time when it comes to paperwork simply because there is no guide showing EXACTLY what they are wanting you to do with it?

Right now I have my son's assessment application, and the stuff required to send it back was never mentioned on the phone. They also ask my requests are. Under assessment, it has general, music, reading, OT/sensory, and a few other things. I finally broke and called them today to ask-I don't know what he's needing exactly, or what they want to test him on for all of this, so how do I know what to mark? ...and I hate seeing "general" on something when you have to choose that or other things because I don't know what "general" means if I know very little of what exactly it is they do, or if no one has told me. This thing has been sitting here for 4 days now, I keep looking at it and getting stuck on things. I know nothing horrible will happen just because I don't fill it out right, but I know it can prolong everything if it isn't, and ultimately I'm stuck because I just don't get what they are asking.

When I first called, the guy told me there is no such thing as a stupid question, then as I asked a few more things, he acted thoroughly annoyed that he was having to explain anything at all, lol, so I guess there's no such thing as a stupid question... as long as you aren't the one being bothered with it? lol.



natty
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Age: 52
Gender: Female
Posts: 318

10 May 2007, 11:09 am

Hi nobodyzdream

I have huge problems with paperwork , i misread things, don't read it all or at least don't take it all in , I can't interpret the questions to be sure of what they are asking and worst of all when the question doesn't fit my life or I can't see the relevance .

I am in some serious debt right now because of this very problem . My partner was working and we were claiming working tax credit , then he had to give up his job so I called and told working tax credit what had happened . Some time later they sent me a form called working tax renewal , I didn't read it , why ? because right there on the front it said working tax renewal , I didnt need to renew our working tax credit , why would I neither of us were working so why would i think i was entitled to it so i didnt claim it , i dont claim things im not entitled to.

Now as a result of my oversight we have to pay back all the money we were given by tax credit in the year before , its thousands and we just dont have it . Were also in debt because when the working tax credit stopped so did the child tax credit , in my head I belived they were linked ( both called tax credit and both stopped at the same time)so didn't claim child tax credit either so we have been living for many months with £70 a week less benifit coming in than we were entitled to , of course nobody pointed out my error in recieving less than I should , they only point out when you owe them money .

If you want my advice , get profesional help with forms if you are even slightly confused, in fact I would now say get proffesional advice full stop because I didnt know i'd done anything wrong but i had and its having really bad consequences for my family.
bb natty



nobodyzdream
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Apr 2007
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,267
Location: St. Charles, MO-USA

10 May 2007, 11:33 am

yeah, really important forms really get me tripped up. I'm gonna be filling out a form for a grant for college and I'm already nervous about it, lol-that one's more important because it has to do with finances. I already know when I go to fill that one out I'm going to have one of the school counsellors go over it with me.

My bf's family helps me with everything right now and when I went to fill out forms for food stamps I didn't understand why they wanted to figure in their family's income when I'm only needing to feed MY family. They eventually had me fill out this thing asking what all he pays for and everything and figured that into my income for some reason. I still don't quite understand why because none of the stuff is in my name-NONE of the payments are in my name, so it's really not my income, it's just something nice he is doing-renting a place and letting me live here. But I don't question that as much anymore, I just figure that's how they do it. It did cut my f.s. down to $200 a month for 3 people, which is like, $0.60 a meal or something per person, lol. Still odd if you ask me, but hey, that's what they did.

I absolutely hate tax stuff, I always go to H&R block and have them do it because I don't really get what all they are asking me for on my own or why some of it makes a difference.... and rarely retain why or anything whenever they attempt to explain it.



pluto
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2006
Age: 63
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,576
Location: Paisley,Scotland UK

10 May 2007, 11:36 am

I wouldn't let yourselves be too self-critical about paperwork .We recently had elections in
Scotland that were a complete shambles due mainly to the ballot papers being poorly designed.
Around 142,000 papers -7% of the total- were rejected.I managed to understand them but
only because I've had a long career dealing with paperwork in general. A lot of the
problems are caused due to the people who design the forms not being able to see things
from the public's perspective.


_________________
I have lost the will to be apathetic


iceb
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Apr 2007
Age: 67
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,562
Location: London UK

10 May 2007, 12:38 pm

I'm not very good at all with paperwork.



Fraya
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,337

10 May 2007, 12:49 pm

I hated taking tests in school where the directions were written on the paper because they were almost always vague and far too terse.

Question: "Whats the shortest distance between two points?"
My answer: "Uhh.. 0?"



nobodyzdream
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Apr 2007
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,267
Location: St. Charles, MO-USA

10 May 2007, 8:49 pm

*whew* glad to know I'm not the only one, lol. I feel like I'm a complete moron when I'm trying to fill stuff out or answer things like that.