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

Grass her up then.

Finally. Thank you. Again!

Please don’t accuse me (or anyone) of ‘ableism’ without making the effort to understand the context of a comment. Thank you.

The DWP do not check if you leave the country or not unless you are “ under investigation”.

It’s not true, that’s why we don’t believe you. Your friend may exist, she may be telling you this, but if so she’s lying.

More likely you are to be fair.

(For the second time 🙄), I was answering a question further up the thread.

Quite obviously, people with continence difficulties can take flights. Of course.

They don’t assess your condition, they assess your ability to perform certain tasks and how your condition affects your ability to function in day to day life! They don’t need to be an expert in your condition, they are following a set of guidelines set by the DWP!

I don’t use the system myself, but the person I know definitely attended an assessment in a job centre.

There’s no need to be so gleeful about it OP. It only helps to perpetuate the myth that all
or most people on disability benefits must be faking it. I’m sure there are some people who are definitely faking it, law of averages says there must be. However, face to face consultations just aren’t needed for each and every condition. I get PIP, I also work full time and will be a higher rate tax payer come April. However, my condition will never change, it’s lifelong. I don’t need a face to face meeting just to check whether I’ve ‘recovered’ from it. There’s no cure and my needs will remain the same.

@Hellohelga
Tell is more about this neighbour - can you post his name? His alleged conditions? How you know there is NOTHING wrong with him?
Im shocked you haven’t already reported him - that will take a few minutes of your time and save the public purse £800 a month.

As someone else down the thread pointed out, the DWP haven’t linked passports to PIPs yet, and even if they had, they might not uncover everyone’s movements.

I don’t understand why people are so reluctant to accept this anecdote. There’s huge resistance to believing me. I got a message on WhatsApp about ten days ago, saying my friend’s mobile number had changed, as she exited one country and entered another - presumably she changed her SIM card. So she’s still travelling (solo).

As long as the person doing the assessment isn’t a physiotherapist trying to assess a medical condition she’s never heard of.
or a CPN trying to assss a spinal cord injury.
or an occupational therapist trying to assess complex ptsd.

etc.

New govt rules will stop…
third parties booking driving tests - in a bid to stop bots and resale sites,
resale of gig tickets at above face value - in a bid to stop ticket touts,
handing out PIP without laying eyes on the person - in a bid to stop benefits cheats.

Do you see a trend here. There are some obvious ways of stopping cheats making easy money, but the previous government couldn’t be bothered to do them. This government is doing them. Honest people should be happy including genuine PIP recipients. Weeding out the cheats will stop resentment and PPs saying…my neighbour gets it and there’s nothing wrong with him, it’s all a scam.

Some how I don't think you have experienced disability. The planning, energy and aftermath of such appointments. The fact that everything is more expensive when you can't just leave the house whenever you fancy, that things are not always accessible. That life is already small and difficult enough. Disabled people are already fighting an invisible battle, and the recent rhetoric that pip claimants are usually lying for money is awful.

Because if someone is committing benefit fraud they will do so no matter what obstacles are in there way by making pip harder to get it will mean genuine claimants will suffer

That is only the statistics of people who have been proven to commit fraud….i would put money on it the actual numbers committing fraud and not being caught is far far higher.

Wow they sound like nice people. I get you’re glad you don’t work with them anymore.

I used to work in a medical field and lots of my colleagues had been/were medical assessors for the DWP. The vast majority of them used to believe that a very significant number of claimants were either completely making up their illness or significantly exaggerating their symptoms to get benefits! The same with children getting DLA for adhd etc…they were just labelled as feral brats with poor parenting.

Maybe because fraud and error is round 0.4% in the disability benefits system, which is very low, and yet disabled people are being painted as feckless and workshy for claiming benefits they’re perfectly entitled to ?

Most people agree with catching out benefits cheats. If you are not a benefits cheat then why the hostility to honest people, who you call a baying mob.

Well I hope it increases people’s likeliness of getting the support they need. I wonder how many people have been fobbed off because someone at the other end of the phone thought they were lying because they couldn’t see them. So yes, good news, @PAYE

Assessors are not based in Jobcentres. The assessments are outsourced to private companies. They may share Jobcentre premises in some cases, but they do not interact. And the assessments are standardised. Assessors all follow the same process and are bound by strict rules - they are also randomly audited. And assessors don’t make the decision on who gets benefit, that is down to DWP case managers, based on the assessors report.

And also, l read a long article somewhere about this: squeezed living standards.

People may have not bothered before, but now can’t afford to not bother. Long Covid is another thing that’s pushed numbers up.

I have been severely physically disabled since birth, born without eyes and with multiple joint deformities. Thanks to my amazing parents I was able to access an excellent education and was an academic high-achiever, both at school and at university. I work in a job I love but I am aware that I would be completely unable to do almost any job in the modern world without the array of adaptive technology, specialist equipment and personal support which makes it possible for me to get to work and perform while there.
Most employers would be unable or unwilling to put the infrastructure in place to make employing someone like me possible as it can be prohibitively expensive to do so. I am very fortunate to work for a company who pride themselves on being a disabled-friendly employer and have gone the extra mile to accommodate me. However, without my PIP, I would be struggling to remain in work as it helps to defray some, though by no means all, of the extra costs related to my disability, just to allow me to function day to day.
I have a lovely family and a great social life with friends and am not lacking in confidence. No amount of socialisation would allow me to eschew all the specialist equipment I require in order to work. To suggest that all disabled people need to allow them to work as effectively as non-disabled people is to try a bit harder and have more confidence is both an extremely foolish and dangerous suggestion.
Do you know what it would take to genuinely make it possible for more disabled people to work? Money, lots of money. To make workplaces accessible to the whole spectrum of disabilities, to pay for equipment and adaptations, to pay for people to support disabled staff. The posters on here whinging about the few hundred pounds a month we get in PIP aren't going to like that.
Also, the number of people I see on here moaning about reasonable adjustments for disabled people in the workplace sends the clear message that we can't win either way, we're lazy work-shy scroungers if we don't work and an inconvenience or demanding 'special treatment' if we do work.