Anti-social Services

Fool me once, shame on me.
Fool me twice, you're probably social services.

So E and I have been sweating all month over our housing review. Because of our disabilities, everything we do with SHA is supposed to be through email-- it's written out, it leaves a trail, it can't be lost. Nevertheless we weren't surprised to get our annual "prove you need us" review by mail, with our case worker's name and sig at the bottom. After all, this review process is largely automatic. We pulled ourselves together, tore our stuff apart, scanned all our documents and emailed them to him and asked him for a confirmation--- and kept asking him for a confirmation, by email, and by phone, for a week and a half as if falls on and off our wonky radar in between nonfunctioning limbs and passing out etc. Twice we've left messages on the main line.

So! Today we finally got a call back.
Our case worker is no longer there.
Our case worker wasn't there when the review form was mailed out. But they have a protocol, possibly required by law, that any paperwork that gets sent out lists an actual human being to contact and be accountable. And since it takes weeks... or more... to replace a case worker, the largely automatic review process is set to just keep using the name, contact, and computerized signature of the last known case worker. At the same time, the old case worker's email and vm are kept running until they have an official replacement... even though no one is checking them.

This happened to us last year. This exact same thing happened to us last year, and, we didn't remember, because-- disabilities!