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

[PAYE]

The only good thing about the budget is that Rachel Reeves announced that face to face assessments for PIP and disability benefits are being brought back. AIBU to think that this is a great thing?

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.

It isn't the same though, is it?

An assessor has access to medical evidence and can challenge it. How is someone with little idea of certain medical conditions qualified enough to be allowed to challenge specialists in the area of the medical condition?

Someone on the end of the 999 call doesn't already have a consultants report or in some cases, several different consultant reports.

Assessors are not required to have any specialist knowledge, and no doctors are employed by assessment providers.

Well thats the way it works 🤷‍♀️

Strange, they knew id been out of the country prior to applying for UC and ADP, so 2 different departments. It was a 10.day holiday, nothing sinister.

Thats tax data and it was an error!

PIP is assessed on functional ability - this is nigh on impossible without a working knowledge of how their disability affects them. There is a ‘probability’ factor built in to the assessment, based on what is known about how some disability presents, and common factors, such as incontinence for example. Forty minutes is the length of the average assessment. Nowhere near long enough to assess complex disability.

Which is a waste of everyone's time if an assessor doesn't even know what they are talking about.

All it does is lead to more mandatory reconsiderations and tribunals which again, not only wastes even more time but also costs money.

It isn't logical. At all.

I suggest you learn how pip works! Its nothing to do with the condition you have its to do what you can or cannot do due to that condition! For instance diabetes may affect one person very differently to how another person is affected by it! You don’t need to be an expert in diabetes to see that!

Yes they do.

i applied for pip after my accident in 2015.

I had a home visit.

at the time of the visit I could not walk at all due to the accident - leg mangled.

i got a report that said I was male (I’m female) and that I had a spinal condition affecting my arms.

i’d like to think the assessor just typed the wrong report by my name, but it was beyond inaccurate.

Well there we go, you answered you own question. OCD is a severe mental disorder especially when coupled with other conditions i.e anxiety. However anxiety alone should not be a reason to claim a disability benefit long term. Especially if the person is not seeking treatment.

As for suggesting I "look after him for a day" your assumption that it is anymore difficult than caring for my 5ft 10 year old daughter who has the mental capacity of an 18 month old (including all of the hygiene issues, behavioural issues, social understanding, personal care, dressing herself, language skills, plus periods) would be incorrect.

The amount of PIP needed for the extra costs of anxiety are not even in the same stratosphere as someone with the conditions I listed. The rates of pay are unfair and not fit for purpose.

you may say on your form for instance that you cannot stand up without help! They will often come and greet you in the waiting room at an assessment, they are not really greeting you they are assessing which kind of chair you sat in for instance. A chair with arms would be easier for you stand up from than one without arms. They are watching to see how you stand, how you walk etc! They can assess cognitive abilities by watching how you respond to their questions and how you answer them!

Well as many PIP claims are now ‘unseen disabilities’ - how will face to face assessments help?

My eldest has had the same condition since birth, but now its harder since they need independence that they can not have. Its not improved. Its harder. Dla/pip since they were 2 and we still have to have a reassessment every 2 yrs. Pointless.

Because for instance someone could state they can’t have any social interaction with strangers or they can’t leave the house due to anxiety. Attending their interview and answering their questions disproves both of these things! Im not saying that this is the right way for these things to be assessed but this is the way the DWP operates!

Yep.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

Exactly!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.