Financial help.

Hi granzilla. I don't know about anything about financial help but I do know there are volunteers who will drive people to appointments. In our area the Red Cross offer the service or check with your AgeUK. Good luck and I hope your op is successful. Let us know how you get on.

Granzilla firstly welcome
Secondly absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about!

I'd contact your local AgeUK or CAB office and ask for a benefit check - I'm pretty certain that you'd be eligible for something to top up your income.

Local AgeUK often have volunteer services that may be able to help too.

Do you have a local LINK service where volunteer drivers will take you to the appointments ( there's often a small charge)

Where do you live? Try googling 'help with hospital appointments' (does the hospital where you're going to get physio have any advice - our local DGH has a subsidised bus service for things like this)

I'd definitely tell the hospital that you can't get to physio post-op and what do they suggest, it's all very well them say three times a week physio!

Hopefully other GNs will have sound advice, I hope all goes well for you!

I agree on enquiring about volunteer drivers which the hospital PALS office should be able to advise you on.

Also, you say that you live in a city - is there not a different physio department that you could go to?

Finally, I wonder which bright spark placed a physio centre not accessible by public transport!!

Try asking for hospital transport- it is crazy that the physio dept. is not remotely accessible unless one has a car.

Re benefits, I know zilch about it but what I do know is that if one has £23,250 or thereabouts in savings, one is usually on one's own.

I agree, Age UK may well help out for a small charge. I would pay £20 once but never x3 a week and for how many weeks?

Good luck with the shoulder replacement.

Hello granzilla, there are often very many local organisations that can help with travel to medical appointments. If you care to say which city/town you live in I'll happily do a trawl to see if I can find one for you in your area. Otherwise check out the links below:
www.redcross.org.uk/en/What-we-do/Health-and-social-care/Independent-living/Transport-support
www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcosts/Pages/Travelcosts.aspx

Goodness me! What a lovely response from you all.Thanks so much.The physio depts in our city have been farmed out to the private sector so that's why they're a bit more difficult to get to.I'll take all of the wonderful advice given on board and come back later as I'm taking our 3 DGC's out now.Again thank you so much.

Hello granzilla no problem at all in asking friends for advice. I see several people have said about community transport and volunteer schemes. It also occurred to me when I had to have a lot of therapy it was actually only one or two real time appointments and the rest was exercises I had to do at home and then a periodic check up so hopefully you wont be going all that often. Like you I get my state pension next year. Good luck with it all.

When I was working in hospitals, people on a low income were entitled to have their fares refunded and would fill in a form at the hospital. Try this link to the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme: www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcosts/Pages/Travelcosts.aspx

CAB or Age Concern should be able to advise further.

I hope you manage to sort this out.

If our hospital transport ( the non volunteer variety!) is typical I wouldn't bother using it! They turned up with a dental patient who had an 11 am appointment at 7.30 pm. The community dept closes at 5!

We have a friend who is a volunteer and drives patients to and from hospital appointments, sorry I don't know who the actual employer is.
I googled and found this link:
To find your nearest Age UK you can phone Age UK Advice for free on 0800 169 65 65 FREE.
I'm sure Age UK Advice could help.

Every hospital has a Transport Dept , you should explain to either your hospital dept or your own GP and ask if Transport could be made available..

Think WRVS (or is it just RVS nowadays?) may have volunteer drivers as well.

We have a scheme called communicare and DH and I used to be volunteers for it.We took people to any medical appointments anything up to 20 miles away.We would wait and also go into consultations if needed.It was accessed through the GP,s who would assess need. It was totally free unless patients felt they could contribute a small amount which went to the organization. We gave our services although we could have claimed mileage.Please ask about such a service in your area either at your GP or social services and never feel awkward or embarrased. We feel we may need such an organization ourselves one day as DH can no longer drive and taxis are very expensive.

The Red Cross could be another third sector organisation with volunteer drivers.