One to one benefit assessments

[Amazonjaunt]

It would save money in the long run if all benefits claims had to be assessed one to one, surely?

Thanks for this info, I received a letter last week saying my claim wouldn't be reviewed until at least 2032, and I wondered why.

NB you aren't in a position to say claimants lie either but you did.

You're welcome. Actually and ironically at least on this thread I can share some real info!

I think you're a bit muddled on the process.

People apply for PIP and either fill in the form themselves or with support from organisations like citizens advice.

Then they have an assessment (except in rare circumstances including when they do not have long to live).

The assessment use to always be face to face, in covid telephone assessments came in and these have stayed. These assessors do not make decisions. The case then goes to a decision maker.

There have long been complaints that the decision makers formal assessment bears little resemblance to what was said in the application form or face to face / telephone assessment. Many people stop there. Those who take it to face to face appeal have a good likelihood of success.

It would be interesting to see how decisions would change if decision making authority were delegated to the healthcare professionals who do the assessments, although I am skeptical as leakes to the press, etc have shown they are under pressure to not give supportive assessments.

A former client of mine was gobsmacked when he had go through the renewal process. He was a double above-knee amputee and thought that the DWP should realise that his legs weren't going to grow back.

There have long been complaints that the decision makers formal assessment bears little resemblance to what was said in the application form or face to face / telephone assessment. Many people stop there. Those who take it to face to face appeal have a good likelihood of success.

When you see the number of assessment reports that I and other welfare rights people on here probably have, you quickly realise that the bulk of the reports are just a massive copy & paste exercise. You see the same wording over and over again, sometimes even with the same typos!

I've seen it where the claimants gender has been changed part way through the report

Another issue with increasing the number of F2F assessments is the sparse distribution of assessment centres.

I've worked with clients in 2 counties and a city. There's an assessment centre in the city, which is fine. One county has 3 assessment venues, but they're all close to the coast which is pretty inaccessible for people who can't drive/afford a car and live in the more rural north of the county where public transport is limited and unreliable.

The other county has none, they all have to go out of county or into the city. Some people have to travel 40-odd miles for their appointment and because it's cross-country, not just to the nearest big town, some clients have to get two buses and two trains to get there, which is often not possible because of their health conditions.

When they ring and explain this (or I do so on their behalf), they generally decide to do the assessment by phone instead.

This is in the south-east, I dread to think how far people have to travel for assessments in a large rural county, like Cumbria or North Yorkshire.

So you are talking about reviews, not initial applications?

Come on OP use your critical thinking.

If you have 100 PIP renewals and you split them into 2 piles - straight forward renewals that do not need an assessment Vs complex claims that do.

Surely pile a will have most of the long term chronic claimants whose conditions are not going to get better. Indeed, the government is likely to save money because many of these claiments conditions will have worsened, potentially putting them up to a higher band.

This is a relatively new way of doing things that only came in approx 2 years ago to save money and stress.

Someone I know has been on PIP for over 20 years. With the old system of face to face medical assessments followed by arms length assessor (Decision Maker in DWP terms) has been awarded anything from highest rate mobility and middle rate care to just lowest rate mobility. He has been to 3 tribunals, one gave him the highest rates care and mobility. The other 2 gave him highest rate mobility, lowest rate care. He has been without benefit when his mental health was too poor to go to tribunal and for many months going through the appeal process.

Only once has a full assessment with face to face assessor given him an award, his current award of mobility only. I think middle rate, I am not sure. With the process change for the first time in his life he had a renewal this year without assessment (for his long term, chronic, never going to change for the better, just deteriate conditions).

He was over the moon. For the first time no poor mental health, lack of sleep, worry or cost to the taxpayer of assessments, appeals, tribunals (where he would also have been awarded the care element).

I'm in the NE also supporting clients and it is dire. I originally did this job in East Anglia, when the PIP rollout began and F2F was much higher then but of course so much has changed

@LakieLady and of course putting in that kind of assessment infrastructure in terms of buildings and appropriate assessors is going to have a cost that will dwarf any hypothetical savings.

I have seen an extension of just 9 days. What is the point in that? What a waste of money and resources. And I have seen an extension of 5 years 6 months.

Yes I have heard of those ridiculously short ones though not for anyone I support. They are utterly pointless imo

Don't we trust doctors any more?

I think the easiest and cheapest solution is for a patient's own GP to sign off a form to confirm that a patient's medical condition will impact their lives seriously enough for them to need financial support.

Nothing else should be required. It would save a lot of money in administrative costs of assessments etc!

Absolutely this.

You clearly know nothing about PIP assessments.

If there is a Doctors letter saying that someone has lost all 4 limbs to Sepsis for example, or a person has a severely disabling condition why does this need a face to face assessment for someone with complex needs who can't even walk or talk for example. Are you saying a Dr can't be trusted and someone else needs to be paid to count how many limbs someone has left.
We'd waste less money if we stopped regularly assessing people to see if their limbs had grown back and also accepted that lifelong conditions don't change. There is a requirement to tell DWP if something changes and your limbs magically reappear.

Assessments are almost always done by private companies that make profit out of this. This means that the taxpayer isn't paying DWP staff to do the work at cost we are paying huge private companies to do this work for profit - so it costs more because they make profit out of this.

The private companies are incentivised to turn down applications.

You may think it's good to deny more claims as it 'saves money', but the truth is that claims that are turned down can be appealed. The majority of appeals find that the claim should have been granted and the Assessor was wrong to deny the claim.

When a claim is appealed the DWP has to do more work and the courts get involved to hold tribunals to hear the appeals - this costs a lot of money.

People are paid PIP because they are severely disabled and for some so that they can get care they need to help them stay in work, or get in to work. People on PIP who work pay tax just like the rest of us and so they are also contributing to the cost. Without PIP payments the cost of disability would be very much higher.

You will find it very hard to find someone who is disabled that wouldn't gladly swap their meagre PIP payments for an able body.

Everything to do with disability costs more - wheelchairs and car adaptations are very expensive. PIP allows you to have a car lease (with an upfront cash payment you pay yourself) or a wheelchair - not both and the NHS does not provide wheelchairs (Physio, Orthotics, Braces, Hoists, Commodes...) to everyone that needs them.

I hope you are never in a car accident that is no fault of your own but leaves you with a loss of limb(s) or you have Sepsis that means you lose all four limbs or you get a terrible disease that leaves you with a permanent disability. Because then you too will be the object of hatred and ridicule for getting some small financial support for the enormous costs you face dealing with the impact of your disability and the total lack of care and support from the NHS and 'the council' for an awful lot of conditions and disabilities.
You may even have to give up going to your favourite pub, restaurant, sports venue, concerts... because you can't get access or there are so few accessible tickets you missed out. At least you won't get left in a burning building anymore as a child campaigned to get this changed after he was left alone in a school that was on fire as there was no evacuation plan for a child in a wheelchair.

You may think it's good to deny more claims as it 'saves money', but the truth is that claims that are turned down can be appealed. The majority of appeals find that the claim should have been granted and the Assessor was wrong to deny the claim.
When a claim is appealed the DWP has to do more work and the courts get involved to hold tribunals to hear the appeals - this costs a lot of money.

The taxpayer has to foot the bill, for all these countless appeals. The PIP system needs a complete overhaul.

When you say 'needs a complete overhaul', what does that look like to you?

My DD’s specialist nurse thinks that instead of spending money on Capita and the likes the DWP should send an assessment form to a professional, or two, who knows the claimant (and spend the money paying them instead).

so for my DD she says the best person for assessing her would be her OT, especially in terms of changes to her condition and the impact that has on her.

I remember my GP saying that a lot of doctors don't know their patients care and /or mobility needs and not everyone is under a consultant or social services. But they have access to our medical history. At my assessment I was asked what one of my diagnoses were. It was then decided it wasn't that bad.

Some of us aren't under consultants because there's no treatment. And some of us are on never ending waiting lists

I would hope (I don't know for a fact) that the claims they don't assess in person are the no brainers, e.g. someone with MND. This would be a pointless waste of resources. I have no beef whatsoever supporting the additional costs associated with MND . I would hope this is why the rate is higher for those which don't get assessed.

I think however that the fraud rate is bollocks, it is dependent entirely on the number of fraudulent cases identified which is dependent on the number of full investigations undertaken (low).

My DSD is not under anyone’s care except regular GP stuff. All of the evidence is in her notes, but she rarely meets the same GP each time.

We were fortunate that her mother kept all her medical letters and SEN reports from birth and my DSD was given them when she moved in with us 10 years ago. Her PIP form was written around them. I would probably not give the big file of everything to the GP but ask the, to read the PIP form.

It is my belief that a lot of PIP claims fail because people say (for example) “I only have one leg”, not “this means I need a bedpan because I shouldn’t be expected to put on my prosthesis or crawl if I need the loo. My prosthesis can give me sores which means there are days I cannot wear it and need a wheelchair etc”. And this focus on the worst days and the things a disabled person can’t do can be very upsetting and humiliating.

Which might also explain the high success rate on appeal.

This comes with its own issues. We used to do supporting statements for DLA within our children's therapy team - there is a page for professionals to write about the child's condition and needs. Then we were told to stop due to

• being blamed when awards weren't as parents expected - once I has a Dad shouting at me in the reception of our clinic and police had to be called to escort him off the premises, apparently he was relying on that money to pay his rent and it was my fault they would be homeless.
• parents asking us to exaggerate their child's needs
• parents turning up at our clinic and demanding it be done straight away as they were close to submission deadline, and when told their child's therapist was busy, to leave the form and would get a call when completed, our reception team got verbal abuse

The relationship between a health professional and patient on the nhs can be harmed when they see us as directly responsible for their benefits. Its important they trust us, as we sometimes see their children without parents present, such as in school.

Sending general reports we have written is fine as they are not written with sole purpose of claiming, but as an impartial record of a consultation.

Our gp called our daughter in when the dwp wrote to him about her first PIP claim. She was 16, autistic but otherwise healthy and so he didn't know her and didn't know what to put on the form. He crawled "not as able as she looks" across all the paperwork and that was it. Mind you, it worked, given that was one of the big points i was making in the PIP application.

It definitely does need an overhaul. There is no extra money, so it's really important that what there is, gets to those for whom it will make the most difference to their day to day lives, which (and i know this might be controversial) may not always be those most severely affected. PIPs purpose is to maximise a person's independence, distinct from DLA which is to support with the extra costs linked to raising a child with a disability.

And the system needs to be streamlined, it takes way too long, especially for those with palliative care needs or new traumatic conditions, such as after a head injury or traffic incident.

It also needs to be more nuanced, with greater number of levels. Having only low or high mobility for example rather than several levels. It surprises me when young people who I work with are on the same level as me, but much more limited.

The form needs to more accessible and less reliant on 'keywords' or skills beyond basic literacy. It should be possible to complete online. Strangely the initial pip can now be completed online but the renewal cannot, which is crazy.