To be surprised and shocked that PIP is rewarded without official diagnosis?

[Borntrippy]

Thanks to all the recent threads on the DLA/PIP controversy I’m now aware that you don’t need an official diagnosis for conditions such as anxiety, ADHD etc to receive PIP. Although you apparently have to show other evidence in your claim is anyone else surprised by this information?

Yep, if you're on medication you have to show the repeat prescriptions.
And what people are not getting is that to get PIP, you have to be so incapacitated by your condition (whether anxiety or otherwise) that you can't go out alone, can't feed yourself, can't cook a simple meal, can't bathe, can't manage your medications or therapies independently etc etc..... In that case whatever the "disorder" is, it's clearly a disability!
And they don't just take your word for it. If you don't have evidence, they just write back to say "you have said you can't do xyz, but there is no evidence to support this claim so I have decided that you can".

You do know that when you get diagnosed, you don't get told that you're disabled, right? There's no list that says who's disabled, or what counts as a disability. It's an understanding you can come to based on what you can and can't do. See the Equality Act.

A diagnosis doesn’t make a difference to the person suffering. If you have a broken bone, having a doctor confirming you’ve broken it doesn’t change anything. If a doctor doesn’t confirm it, it’s still broken. Evidence is far more important than a diagnosis.

There are a lot of disabilities that are never diagnosed,

For physical disabilities or a combination of physical and mental disabilities the normal term is "syndrome without a name"

geneticalliance.org.uk/support-and-information/swan-uk-syndromes-without-a-name/

Many of these people are very obviously visibly disabled but don't have a diagnosis because either it's a rare genetic issue or the combination of disabilities hasn't been named yet.

More generally PIP is deliberately a functional assessment - it is based on what you can do and what you cannot do not your diagnosis.

Reported as hate speech. I'm absolutely sick of reading crap like this.

And "other evidence" - what evidence do you think that is if it's not letters from doctors and medical professionals? Do we not trust them to do their job now? It's not like you take a picture of your bed and caption it "haven't got out of bed in a week #lol #freeMoney".

DS got DLA without a diagnosis.
He was "on the pathway" as they say. So he'd seen someone from CAHMS briefly and they'd put him on a waiting list for a proper assesment.
As evidence I provided the report from that meeting and his latest school report.
People can sit on waiting lists for a long time and they have all the same care needs during that time. So it's not unreasonable really.

@K0OLA1D it's true!! We have genuine people being turned down and twats like that taking every frigging penny they can get. A bit of detective work tells you all you need to know, whilst we have cases being turned down again and again - some of which are desperate situations of individuals whose first language is not The English struggling to complete the forms.. I speak from experience, as a volunteer for a disability charity assisting parents in this situation.

I'm not surprised by that really
But I am surprised that SOME people get it.
There are many people that do need it.
But there are some who don't and have managed to get it.

As someone who has suffered from mental illness (ED and OCD) myself and has many family members who have serious illnesses and disabilities (BPD, Diabetes, Cancer, Arthritis etc) I car very much and think those in need absolutely need to be helped. Where I think it’s more of a grey area is ASD, ADHD, Anxiety etc although from what people are saying these milder disorders are unlikely to have enough evidence to pass a claim.

If you compare PIP/DLA with a child who has an EHCP, neither requires a diagnosis but both will require some sort of corroborating evidence from professionals.
The converse is also true - a diagnosis doesn’t mean an automatic right to an EHCP or PIP/DLA. I have taught children with Down Syndrome who didn’t get DLA and others who had no diagnosis but did receive DLA. It’s all about need!

Jeez, another one of these threads. Why don’t you post your “shock” on one of the several other threads doing the rounds on here at the moment.

No, I’m not surprised. PIP is awarded based on what challenges you have to face, not your diagnosis. Backed up with a ton of evidence from health care providers.

Even getting the claim forms sent out is a bloody nightmare - we were considering claiming for my DD - we phoned up for the forms but the call handler was so bloody awful to her, DD burst into tears and the call handler hung up on her - she refuses to try again.

“Maybe if able people took 1 hundredth as much interest in the lives of the disabled as they do the benefits they receive, the UK would be a nicer place to live.”

👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

Exactly!
If you are not severely affected by your disability, you're not going to get PIP.
Autism, anxiety, and ADHD are not "milder disorders" though. They're disabilities. Not everyone with them will be affected enough in their functioning to need PIP, but some will, and that doesn't mean they're malingering, it just means they're disabled. Physical conditions are not the only things that are disabilities.

I’m genuinely curious here. What type of evidence can you provide to show you can’t bathe? Wouldn’t that be very difficult to show unless you had a clear and visible physical disability?

Such as?

I’m surprised you’re not surprised that even with an official diagnosis, many claimants are denied PIP. I could surprise you with a few more things too, but I’m bored now 🙄.

It's a shame the MNHQ message doesn't leave the PPs name.

I’ll bite.

You don’t need a diagnosis for pip. No, I’m not surprised because I work on pip appeals and also receive pip.

Diagnosis is irrelevant to pip eligibility. Someone with a diagnosis will still need evidence that their condition impacts their daily living, and someone without a diagnosis will need exactly that evidence too.

I mean, I have a physical disability that affects my mobility, so they extrapolated from the report that said I can't walk properly to believe me on the bathing.
If it's due to mental illness, then it would presumably be a report from a mental health professional detailing self care problems. If it's due to autism, your diagnostic report or the report from carers might detail your sensory issues around water.
But also, accessing the services to get this documented is difficult, hence why a lot of people can't provide evidence and don't get awarded.
ETA: how hard it is to prove is why so many people get turned down for PIP when they desperately need it, e.g. to pay a carer to help and prompt them to bathe or clean their teeth. you almost got the point, and then veered off at the last minute.

Are you kidding??! I could show you plenty of children with ASD who will likely never live independently due to their severe needs.

How do you know? Do you move into their home for a couple of weeks and assess them against the qualification criteria? I'd love to know how total strangers can look at someone and assess them as not disabled. It happened to me, over a parking space rather than benefits, but I hadn't even got out of the frigging car and they were berating me.

Ok, you have to be taking the piss now. Milder disorders…

I call BS here.

STOP THE BENEFITS BASHING.

Not really my son is 14 he has no physical disabilities ,hes severely autistic, has severe learning disabilities, he needs full assistance with personal care as cognitively he's around 2/3 he will happily stand under the shower but won't wash himself, he can dress himself of a fashion but if i left it up to him he would have his clothes on back to front and inside out ,shoes on the wrong feet etc .
He currently gets High rate care and High rate mobility and I don't anticipate that changing when he transfers ro PIP

If you have an invisible disability that prevents you from bathing there’s likely to be evidence of that, too. If you’re so depressed you can’t motivate yourself to wash, for example, you’re likely to be in touch with the cmht.

Not a stranger.
Know very well.
However I don't hold it against them (and it's really not one of those goady situations people quote on here) and I don't bring it up with them.
There's no point me posting about it because people get like this.
Just, there's no point getting at me. wrong person to direct any anger to.