To be delighted PIP assessments are to be face to face?

I agree that they outright lie and say things like the claimant showed no signs of pain or had no trouble walking even when they are in agony and can hardly move! Face to face assessments are useless when the accessors tell lies.

I'm not an immigrant. I've got dual nationality.

I'm sure you will relish the chance to pay more tax to fund people like my nephew on his overseas jaunts while claiming PIP.

But it’s not a medical appointment is it? And my son is a British citizen with exactly the same rights as you. He absolutely shouldn’t have to rely on charity or his parents to apply for support.

The distress caused to people with lifelong conditions by reassessment is cruel, and an absurd waste of resources. Someone who is 40, non verbal, fragile X... strangely enough, they probably won't become tremendously employable in the foreseeable future.

The change is about social cohesion, not cost saving. Sad, isn't it.

Some conditions & some individuals should be reconsidered - eg injuries that have the potential to improve - but why should I, as a taxpayer, shell out 40k a year to someone who cannot possibly be expected to guess, without medical information, if someone really has debilitating pain, or is genuinely experiencing mutism, or whatever? Whilst causing huge distress to people who are genuine. I'd much rather take the risk of someone claiming dishonestly.

Yes. They’ve been given a specific budget and extra staffing to deal with fraud.

I think regular face to face assessments are appropriate, as long as they can be carried out at home.

I just find it weird. Imagine having such a sad little life that it makes you delighted.

Agree. I find the title of the thread quite insulting to be honest.

It will make sure that the money goes to those who need it. It is madness that such face to face assessments were ever stopped.

😂😂😂😂😂
And how will they tell he difference between a good carer keeping a disabled person fed, clean and dressed nicely vs a person doing it for themselves?

The F2F pip assessments of the past resulted in assessor making assumptions based in bias and prejudice

Yep. It’s nonsense to suggest that you can accurately assess how someone’s condition affects them without knowing anything about the actual condition you’re looking at. Context is everything.

I feel sorry for my last assessor. 3 hours and 50 minutes. A lot of it was due to selective mutism, and I was obviously his last call of the day, and he was late calling me!

Unfortunately, him being late calling me just added to my distress, and that's what stopped me being able to talk.

I think if they had pulled me into a centre to do an assessment then it would definitely have taken much longer than that too. Anybody thinking forced F2F assessments are something to celebrate haven't got a clue what they're being so gleeful about.

I know about PIP thanks - been a disability outreach worker for twenty years and have dealt with PiP since its introduction in 2013. I’ve made successful PIP applications on behalf of claimants and supported them at assessments and appeal tribunals. I know how it works - or should I say, is supposed to work.

I didn’t say the disability itself is assessed - it isn’t. And that’s as it should be because no disability affects any two people in exactly the same way. But that doesn’t mean that the assessor doesn’t need a working knowledge of the condition of the person in front of them because the assessment doesn’t just cover what they are able to do in the half hour it takes to complete the assessment.

It’s an assessment of how their condition may fluctuate and affect them day to day. It’s whether they can do something, not just once, but as often as necessary throughout the day, whether they can do it repeatedly, reliably, safely and in a reasonable time frame. It’s also about whether completing one activity has a knock on effect on something else. For example, if you’re so tired after washing and dressing that you can’t prepare yourself breakfast, then that is factored in, as is pain, breathlessness and discomfort. Assessors also need to know how certain medications work and their side effects, so they can factor that into cognitive or functional ability. So it’s nonsense to say they don’t need knowledge of a range of disabilities because without that they won’t know if what the claimants is reporting is a reasonable expectation of their condition.

My daughter (asd) was assessed by a physiotherapist.

She was 16, he was about 50.

He asked her if she chatted to her friends in the evening on her phone.

She said yes.

He scored her zero points.

He meant "do you and your close friends call each other and chat for half an hour".

She meant she sent one word text messages to people whose number she had.

This is where the lack of understanding of conditions falls down. They dont understand the context.

I hope you complained and got a reassessment from a different assessor. As an outreach worker I saw a lot of this - happens mainly with home visits because assessors don’t have time to fully complete the paperwork from one visit before they’re on to the next. I’ve seen some appalling mistakes on reports that have led to claimants being denied benefit.

For which they have been consistently criticised by appeal tribunals. The assessment was never intended to be a snapshot of an hour in the claimants’ life and there are rules and guidance which DWP regularly ignores. Because you can get to an interview one day, doesn’t mean you can do it the next. If you can’t do something reliably, repeatedly as often as needed throughout the day, safely and within a reasonable time frame, then you should be assessed as not being able to do it.

This. It’s a common misconception and it’s easy to see why when you read this thread. To get PIP for mental health, you need to be involved with secondary care consultant led mental health services - and even then it’s very difficult. A few pills dished out by a GP doesn’t cut it.

There’s statistical evidence that DWP puts out every year giving a breakdown of the conditions for which people are claiming PIP. It’s meant as a guide to various agencies but since the internet, Joe Public has access to it, and what people don’t seem to be able to grasp is that a claimant can have one disability or multiple conditions - it’s not specified. Yet I’ve seen that list quoted on MN threads as evidence that people are getting PIP for ‘minor’ things when in actual fact it may be one of multiple conditions for which they are legitimately claiming. Anxiety is one of them. It’s almost impossible to claim PIP for anxiety as a stand alone condition unless it’s severe and necessitates more than primary care from a GP. But it’s on that list so it must be true.

I'm not sure what your point is. The person I was responding to used her child's care needs a a "got ya" moment so I was stating that she a shouldn't just assume I had no experiencing of caring.

Your situation sounds devastatingly difficult and I truly hope your daughter gets through.

I’m disabled. A wheelchair user. And l’m not in the least offended by the term wheelchair bound because I don’t believe getting bogged down in policing language is more important than the actual issues disabled people face. Much of the time it’s down to non disabled people being offended on behalf of someone with a disability.

The walk to the assessment room from the waiting room is also around twenty to thirty metres, and if you can walk it, you’ll likely disqualify yourself from the mobility component without the assessor lifting a finger. There are also cameras in all areas, and at one point conversation could be monitored until it was judged an invasion of privacy and stopped. The assessment wasn’t intended to be a snapshot of an hour in the life of a disabled person, but sadly that’s what it’s become, and an inaccurate one at that. Just because that’s the way things are done doesn’t make it right.

Exactly!

It's much more fun to shout and scream about someone claiming PIP who doesn't appear to be entitled to it though.

Please don't use the term, "wheelchair bound", nobody is bound to a wheelchair.
My claim was not based on not being able to walk, it was based on only being able to walk v short distances, having a chronic, degenerate lung condition, a heart condition, and a bone condition, at that point I was spending 50% of my time in hospital.

If the general public knew how much money was spent on appeal tribunals we may get somewhere. It costs the taxpayer a fortune. We don’t need tinkering around the edges, we need root and branch reform of the whole rotten system, starting with providing properly qualified medics carrying out fair and transparent assessments which get it right first time, without making claimants jump through hoops to get a fair decision.

I look after twin DDs - one with a life threatening degenerative condition, functioning at the level of an 18 month old, anterograde amnesia, profound language disorder, and challenging behaviour to name but a few.

The other has ADHD, OCD, social anxiety (in other words a generalised anxiety disorder), depression and complex PTSD. At the moment, she’s 24 weeks pregnant and suffering extreme OCD. She’s decided she is contaminated, the baby is contaminated (and therefore disabled), I am contaminated (because I have two cats) and the kitchen cupboards are contaminated. She wants a termination as the baby is disabled, won’t let me in the house and decided on Friday, she can’t eat or drink (due to the kitchen cupboards being contaminated)!

Do you know who is harder to care for - the second one, by a long way!

You wouldn’t get PIP for “anxiety” alone.

Yep.

That's when it gets complex and actual knowledge about mental health issues, incontinence etc is helpful.