Angry Angrier Angriest

I went for an optician's appointment the other day and took Jack for an eye test. His eyesight has always been fine and I have no reason to believe that has changed but just wanted to check before he goes off to FE College in September. The office manager told me she'd been in touch with the Primary Care Agency and they were demanding that he pay £26 for the test because he was not registered at a school.

Well now. I sent him off for a coffee and I had my test and found out I need new reading glasses, so I cried at the thought of the £120 I have to pay for them. Okay, I didn't cry but I was upset. I took the name and number of the person at the PCA whom the Opticians had spoken to, went home and have spent much of the last few days tracking people down and shouting at them about this. Okay, I didn't shout but I was extremely terse.{g}

No one is interested in the fact that I still get Child Benefit for him or how full time his education is, just that he's not registered at a Local Authority school, which is how they check eligibility for kids 16+.

The PCA are adamant that they won't fund it because he's not registered with the LA (and so could be working.) They say the only way he could get free eye tests (and presumably prescriptions/dental as well) is by having an HC1 exemption certificate to prove that he has a low income. I kept saying, 'He doesn't have a low income. He doesn't have any income, because he's a child in year 11.' But that fell on deaf ears.

Next, I spoke to the Low Income Unit who issue the HC1 forms. They say that the HC1 is defininitely not designed for him, because he's still a child in full time education. {sigh} They tell me to go to the Dept of Health. The PCA also says it's because of Dept of Health policies.

Dept Health can't find their policies on HE'd children but will get back to me in 3 working days to tell me what they are. I personally doubt that they have any and the PCA is just making this up. If it's PCA policy then the Dept of Health will not overrride it, so I guess then it will then be time to see my poor MP, who is frankly sick to death of me and Home Ed now, because I've been lobbying him to ensure he doesn't support the stupid new bill going through Parliament, which is supposed, by the way, to make sure that home educated students get 'support' from the LA. Yeah, right. Like the support he gets now from the PCA.

I'm furious.

I've never complained about not having access to sports/music tuition, or free computers, or any of the other stuff we're excluded from because we HE and I don't even complain about having spent over a THOUSAND pounds on exam entries in the last year, because, when we didn't put him in school, we knew that would happen.

However, to be denied access to HEALTH CARE on the basis of the VENUE of his education is something 'up with which I will not put', as Winston Churchill said about prepositions at the end of sentences.

PS I realise this isn't going to make much sense to US readers and I am sorry about that, but I am sure you've also experienced the idiocy of government beaurocracy at some point. {g}