{"id":26469,"date":"2025-03-25T12:17:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T12:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alliance-scotland.org.uk\/humansofscotland\/?p=26469"},"modified":"2025-02-11T12:34:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T12:34:41","slug":"martins-story-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alliance-scotland.org.uk\/humansofscotland\/martins-story-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin&#8217;s story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As an unemployed single father to a young daughter, I was struggling. I was on Universal Credit, grateful for what I received but we were just getting by. After food and bills we literally had a few pounds left. It was tough because my daughter has learning difficulties and she\u2019s a visual learner, but she was stuck in the house all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Things changed when, through my Universal Credit adviser, I contacted the charity One Parent Families Scotland. They asked me to go along to a meeting at which Social Security Scotland\u2019s Chief Executive, David Wallace, was speaking. He spoke about Child Disability Payment and told me I should apply for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I applied for Child Disability Payment to help with the costs of caring for my daughter and got it without any issue \u2013 it completely changed things for us. On Universal Credit I was left with \u00a32.77 a month with Child Disability Payment I had \u00a397. When you have nothing, that is a huge amount of money. It meant I could do things to support her learning difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She couldn\u2019t lie down in a bath because she was scared of water but I could afford to take her to the swimming pool and teach her to swim. We could get on a bus or a train and do some outdoor learning. Finding out this money was available to help with those extra costs meant we could do more than just survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It made such a difference to our lives that I now work for Social Security Scotland. The way I was treated during my application and the difference it\u2019s made to our lives, I just knew this was somewhere I wanted to work and to help others the way I was helped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p>This story has been shared in connection with the ALLIANCE&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alliance-scotland.org.uk\/blog\/resources\/stories-of-caring\/\">&#8216;Stories of Caring, A Concert for Caring Special&#8217;<\/a> showcasing the different experiences of care and caring in Scotland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an unemployed single father to a young daughter, I was struggling. I was on Universal Credit, grateful for what I received but we were just getting by. After food and bills we literally had a few pounds left. It was tough because my daughter has learning difficulties and she\u2019s a visual learner, but she &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alliance-scotland.org.uk\/humansofscotland\/martins-story-3\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":26470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"26456,26170,26124,26254,24164,25192","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"hos-category":[743],"humans_tags":[828],"area_of_work":[776],"strategic_priority":[813],"class_list":["post-26469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","hos-category-concert-for-caring-special","humans_tags-services-and-support","area_of_work-humans-of-scotland","strategic_priority-voice-of-lived-experience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Martin&#039;s story - Humans of Scotland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alliance-scotland.org.uk\/humansofscotland\/martins-story-3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martin&#039;s story - Humans of Scotland\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As an unemployed single father to a young daughter, I was struggling. 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