New Welfare Benefits Support Professional sponsored by RWK Goodman

8 August 2022 | Support, Corporate, News

At a time when household finances are under pressure from all quarters, people unable to work due to illness will feel this even more keenly than most. With this in mind, Brain Tumour Support has appointed a new Welfare Benefits Support Professional to offer free advice and guidance for patients and their families. The team at Bath-based legal firm RWK Goodman are supporting the charity by sponsoring this essential new role helping people to access financial and welfare benefits.

Brain Tumour Support CEO, Tina Mitchell Skinner, explains,

“We work to offer free support and counselling to thousands of people diagnosed with brain tumours and their families every year. One of the recurring issues people diagnosed with a brain tumour, whether low or high grade, face is the devastating effect on their finances. Some people have to give up their careers completely, many face long periods of time off work and others are unable to return to their previous role.”

These added financial pressures caused by a brain tumour diagnosis in tandem with the sharp rise in the cost of living, and the complexities of the benefits system place an unbearable burden on many people.

Tina explains how the charity can help.  “We have seen how generic support services regarding access to benefits do not always appreciate the complex needs arising from a brain tumour diagnosis, surgery and treatment. So over the past two years Brian Tumour Support has been able to develop specific and targeted help in this area of need.

Now our dedicated Welfare Benefits Support Professional role will help patients and their families receive benefits they are entitled to, renegotiate loans and debts if required, and apply for grants and other monies available. It’s an absolutely essential role.”

Brain Tumour Support is delighted that the Welfare Benefits Support Professional role is being generously sponsored for 12 months by legal firm RWK Goodman.

Lucy Norton, Senior Associate at RWK Goodman comments. “With the current cost of living crisis, it is more important than ever to have financial security and help when diagnosed with a life-changing condition such as a brain tumour. Brain Tumour Support understands the need for help with financial management and navigating the bureaucracy of the welfare benefits system at this difficult time and that is something that we at RWK Goodman wholeheartedly recognise and support.

The opportunity to sponsor the new Welfare Benefits Support Professional position is something that resonated with us as a firm. Brain Tumour Support has a focus of ‘no-one is alone’ which is a natural fit with RWK Goodman values and with the ethos of our ‘Team Around the Client’ approach. We look forward to seeing the good that will come from the advice that post-holder Steve Miller can give.”

The post-holder for Brain Tumour Support’s Welfare Benefits Support Professional role is Steve Miller. He has been working with Brain Tumour Support in the role of Support Professional in Wales for the past three years and now takes on this post to concentrate on dealing with welfare rights issues for brain tumour patients, families and carers in England, Wales and Scotland. It also builds on his previous ten-year experience as a benefits case worker with Citizens Advice, working with clients suffering from chronic physical and psychological health problems.

Steve says: “It has certainly been my experience over the last three years that there are specific issues which make the benefit procedure especially difficult for brain tumour patients. There is also a quite alarming lack of understanding on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions, and especially the medical assessment companies, on the physical and psychological consequences of brain tumour diagnosis and surgery. As a result, I feel a specialist support service is crucial, and I am hopeful that we will in future be able expand the help provided.”

Find out more about our welfare and benefits service