I have a son with sickle cell disease, and Claire is his clinical nurse. Please, I want you all to help me appreciate Claire. She has been very supportive and helpful in my situation ever since she started working with us.

For our immigration, she sent back-to-back letters from the doctors to the Home Office to support my application.

Regarding housing, the council was moving us from one temporary accommodation to another, and Claire wrote a letter to my housing managers, advising them to provide my son with stability. After that letter, we stayed in one house until we got permanent accommodation, and the house didn’t have a downstairs toilet, which made it difficult for my son to climb the stairs to use the toilet when he was in pain. I used to carry him.

Last year, on her last day at work, we went to say goodbye, and I was telling her about our new house. I said to her, “It’s really big and spacious, just that we don’t have a downstairs toilet. My housing manager said with my son’s condition, I can get a grant from the council to do one for us through a referral from an occupational therapist.”

We left, and the next day around 9:00 am I received a phone call from an occupational therapist that I was referred by Claire then I started crying because it was a surprising news for me, for goodness’s sake It was her last day at work, and we went there around 4:30 pm so I was so surprised with her referral at that last minute. To cut a long story short, with that, we were awarded the grant, and now we have a very beautiful downstairs toilet, courtesy of Claire.

Regarding school, as we were moving from one temporary accommodation to another, some distance was far, and I wasn’t driving by then, so I had to change my son’s school, and Claire will make sure to train the key teachers on my son’s needs and his care plan each time we change schools. 

I was asked to apply for DLA for my son, and when I told Claire about it, she sent me a whole booklet with all the answers to their questions and gave me a medical support letter. They refused the application when I told her, she said, “Don’t worry about it because they are very strict in dealing with DLA,” so I left it.

Then, a year later, when I needed help with my council tax, I used the Citizens' Advice service Claire introduced for sickle cell patients in Leicester, as discussed in our conversation. DLA came up; I told the Advisor I had been refused, and she said I could file an appeal. I was reluctant about it, so I messaged Claire. She said, “Come on, there’s no harm in trying, so do the appeal with her and let me know if you need anything.”

We submitted the appeal with Claire's support letter and other medical records, but it was again refused. Then the Advisor said we have another option to appeal to the court. Honestly, I didn’t have any hope, but as Claire would say, "There’s no harm in trying," so we did it, got me a lawyer from Community Law Services, and the court allowed our appeal.

Trust me, she does a lot behind the scenes, and I can go on and on with her help and support for us. My son needed a surgery for his tonsillitis and adenoids, we were on a waiting list at NGH for quite a long time, so she got a date for us in Leicester Hospital. We left a day before the surgery date, and she organised an ambulance to pick us from our house to Leicester hospital and would call every single day to check how we were doing after the surgery; tell me the kind of questions I should ask the doctors when they come around for check-up. When we got discharged, she also organised a taxi to pick us up from Leicester hospital back to our home.

Claire has been a big deal for us every step of the way and makes this journey less stressful for me and my son. For me, she is my guardian angel in this journey, and I can’t thank her enough. I have so much to say, and I could go on and on. 

Thank you, Claire, for all you do for us.