PIP Decision Maker AMA

[Owmyback]

What do you want to know

unfortunately there are horrible people and we don't have any control over an assessor and what they're like with people at assessments.

So schools have to be rigorously OFSTEDed, hospitals and care homes are answerable to the CQC, but some of the most vulnerable people of all are left at the mercy of whatever an assessor can arbitrarily decide - especially considering that most assessor decisions are later ruled to have been incorrect?

And don't let anybody tell you that only 60% of decisions to turn folk down are wrong - it's 60% of the people who have the ability, help, perseverance and mental capacity to go through the appeals process. Just think how many companies make a large percentage of their money from fit and healthy people who don't, for whatever reason, manage to challenge or cancel their involvement as the object of inertia selling that they no longer want or even never did?

It seems to me that the very people who should be protecting the most vulnerable have made the active decision to exploit their many vulnerabilities in order to throw them under a bus. In many other areas of life, similar attitudes and behaviour would be labelled clearly as abuse.

Doesn't the whole concept of 'Ask Me Anything' strongly imply that 'I will attempt to ANSWER the questions that you ask me' ?

Or was this thread just intended as a sounding board for vulnerable people and their families to vent their frustration and desperation so that it can all be condescendingly marked as 'All better now' and ignored again?

The whole PIP process has 'cured' my son of his many disabilities. Golly, if only we'd known an hour interview and a random looking at paperwork and ignoring everything written ( to be air ignoring what the assessor wrote too) would cure him, we'd have done it years ago. Because he works and drives, he can't have any impairments. I really couldn't do your job ethically knowing that the rationale is to force vulnerable people through a paperwork, stressful process. I know those people aren't you or the assessors necessarily but you are part of this disabilist process and you must know that this is wrong. The process was out there to cut out the wankers who claim benefit wrongly but it has swung too much the other way. You are very brave or niaive coming on here. I don't get angry often but this whole process has made me incandescent.

You've really not answered much at all, have you? That's quite telling.

@Owmyback

What do you want to know

We want to know where you've gone??

I think the OP has been warned off by @WarbreckWaterTower

Warbreck House being the head office of PIP decision makers may just be a coincidence but perhaps OP was at risk of outing herself.

The whole thread was probably an(other) attempt by the DWP to gain some insight into the best way to shut down appeals and successful claims.

Little tip. Never engage with anyone about specifics that have worked to overturn a decision in a public forum. The DWP and Capita and ATOS all monitor social media for tips on how to improve their processes. And not in a good way.

It is also the only post that @WarbreckWaterTower has written under that user name.

Question for anyone in DWP: why does it take so long for PIP2 forms to be put in the post which then takes 3 weeks to arrive from Belfast, and why in this era of digital by default is there still no electronic version of the form available?

These guys

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/

have a PDF version that a local council prepared - complete with the scoring chart. Or did last time I checked. You can also recreate the 2-D barcode that comes on your form to reprint onto the PDF.

Obviously keep the completed document in case they "misplace" it.

I feel as though this thread has taken a sinister turn. The DWP headquarters does resemble a prison and it is overlooked by the Warbreck Water Tower. Does this big brother totalitarian state extend to the DWP staff themselves.

Or was it just a friendly warning from a mate?

I feel as though this thread has taken a sinister turn.

No more sinister than the way the DWP act every day though.

As part of my job, I’ve sat with people during their assessments. I often go with people I have got to know very well. When the reports come back, I am often astounded at how that person has been described. It can sometimes bear no resemblance to reality.

I'm so sickened by this thread but not surprised, I have heard so much of this over the past 10 years. It's a travesty of human rights and the whole process needs to be canned. Didn't someone take the dwp to court about this?

Seems the OP is not answering questions, but just in case I'd like to ask about fluctuating conditions. It was hard enough to apply for DLA with these but with PIP the criteria is even more rigid. For eg, the everyday activities ones - cooking, walking, journeys etc. What if I can do those some days, but can't do them at all others (say more than half the time?) It's impossible to make that 'fit' into the boxes and also completely impossible if you happen to be on a good day on the assessment. You're screwed if so. It's just so so unfair and rubbish.
It's not set up for those who don't fit, whether through mental illness or long term chronic illnesses that are fluctuating and might render someone completely helpless for months then let up for a couple of weeks then strike again. When will benefits assessments take these into account?

whatwedontknow well spotted.

I think we're better qualified than the assessors as we seem to have more empathy and are not doing the decision just based on cold clinical evidence.

I know they've gone but to quote Catherine Tate 'what a load of old shit'. To be an assessor you need a clinical qualification, I'm sure OP said she didn't have any clinical qualifications just training.

To be an assessor you need a clinical qualification, I'm sure OP said she didn't have any clinical qualifications just training.

I've met assessors who had no clinical qualifications (if any at all). You need a cite to support that if you want to trump peoples personal experiences.

Madhairday

For fluctuating conditions the rule is meant to be whatever you feel like the majority days of the week or majority months of the year.

So you have to have at least 4 bad days a week or at least 5 bad months of the year.

However if you happen to have a good day on the day of assessment it is harder to convince them that that itsn't your norm as the assessor makes notes of how you appear (e.g whether you look in discomfort, struggling to move, or how your mood appears etc), therefore the assessor will have to find many ways to explain why you don't look unwell in assessment to justify awarding you any points.

In these cases I would advise a letter from a professional explaining the variability if possible and for you to think up some examples of how much your days can differ.

In these cases I would advise a letter from a professional explaining the variability if possible and for you to think up some examples of how much your days can differ.

Why ? To practice your longhand ? They never read them.

ProfessorSlocombe

Depends how many you send it. Assessors generally have a max 20 minutes to read the PIP2 and evidence, though this is being generous as it is usually only about 10 minutes.

A lot of people send in things like appointment letters, consent forms for surgery, medication and gp history and x-rays, which does not give any information relevant to the assessment therefore the allocated prep time can be wasted filtering through this.

If you have maybe 3 or 4 peices of very informative peices of evidence that explains symptoms and relates to the descriptors or how the symptoms have impacted life assessors usually love this as it can pretty much write their assessment for them.

Also, assessors 100% require qualification. This is easily evidenced by just looking at "disability analyst" or "disability assessor" on job searches and looking at the employment criteria.

Adverts for assessors asking for only clinically trained staff on numerous websites.

Facebook adverts for PIP assessors, where people in their hoards are asking if their experience as a care assistant / massage therapist / reiki practitioner / support worker / nursing auxiliary etc is sufficient and the replies from the recruiting company saying (repeatedly) you have to have a clinical qualification to do the job.

I'm a HCP so often get contacted by agencies asking me to apply and every single one of them is asking for a clinically trained person. Never not.

What medical qualifications do you have to have to be an assessor?

Assessors are all healthcare professionals ie nurse, paramedic, pharmacists, physiotherapists etc.

OP how are you able to tell the assessor that their assessment of the applicant is wrong if you aren't present at the assessment yourself? Obviously I don't know as I've never been either an assessor or a decision maker but I've heard quite the opposite from assessors; that they write a report of their findings yet it is looked over by a remote decision maker who decides that their assessment of the applicant is wrong and makes them change their assessment report. And more often than not, the report is downgraded to minimise their disability and thus award them less than they would have got had the assessor had complete autonomy over the assessment and report.

What medical qualifications do you need to be a decision maker?

I'm actually going to be more blunt than I was in my previous reply. I personally know of three nurses and one physio (and a few others through partners/friends of friends) who left the NHS to become PIP assessors. They all left within 6 months. They and the majority of their colleagues were caring, empathetic people who would carry out assessments in a fair manner, using their clinical judgement and would write up reports as they found the case,. However once they had completed their reports, it would go to a 'decision maker' with no clinical experience or medical training whatsoever, who would 9 times out of 10, return the report to the assessor telling them to change it, generally always in a way which disadvantaged the claimant.

My friends couldn't bear to work in such a corrupt organisation and left quick smart. It really seems OP, that you are trying to lay all the blame of incorrect assessments at the feet of the healthcare professionals when in reality, it is you, the decision makers, who force them to amend their reports with the aim of the applicant scoring as low as possible and thus getting either no, or a lower level of benefits to which they are entitled.

@NotEverythingIsBlackandWhite how long ago was this assessment? As I do know that now certainly, to be a PIP assessor (not PIP decision maker as the OP is) you do need to have a qualification in a a healthcare related field ie nursing, physio, radiography etc.

Theres a middle man between the assessors and the decision maker which are the auditors.

There are two levels of auditors, one which is within ATOS or Capita, they are usually the ones who tell you to deduct points (and on some very rare occasions, tell you to add points) as they pick apart your assessment for any inconsistencies, e.g the assessor saying the person can't engage with people yet the auditor may notice in a peice of medical evidence that a teacher has wrote in a special educational needs review something like "is mixing well with a couple of peers in class", therefore then asks for it to be deducted due to this. Or that you have scored someone for needing to use aids to cook due to grip yet they notice in your social history that they have a hobby of knitting or something, therefore ask you to remove points as that hobby would contradict having poor grip.

These auditors don't audit every assessment, but it is a very high number. Every assessment which scores enhanced gets audited.

Theres also another layer of auditors at the DWP who do a similar thing though I know less about this, however they only pick out a very small number of assessments to audit like 1 in a 1000 or something. I think this is more to do with getting performance stats. This can get bounced back and made to change too.

The decision maker from what I was told rarely disagrees with the final assessment.

I agree with Michelle, the assessors I worked with were all very caring people who tried to be fair there were only a couple who's judgment I would question. Most people didnt stick it out more than a few months (some didnt even last a week). There were a couple long timers there who hated the job with a passion however they just couldn't take the pay cut of going back to NHS and the hours worked better around family life therefore just sucked it up and got on with it.

I did however work with some senior staff both clinical and non clinical who's ethics I would question.

Well my husband seemed to go through it all straight forwardly and was awarded no issues. Only thing was we went out of town, meaning I had to drive him to be told we could have asked for it to be local, but we didn,t know that.