PIP is a benefit that helps disabled people cope with the additional costs of being disabled. It is an "in work" benefit - you can claim it while having a full time job. This is because PIP isn't about whether you cannot work, and the assessment is not about "can you work or not". Your need for PIP may be greater if you are working - if I have a job I need to get up, washed, dressed, fed, and transported into work by a certain time. If I struggle to use my hands I may need to employ a personal assistant. But if I'm nto working, well, the Government says I can live in joggers and hoodies and I can take my time getting up. (But they will then call me a lazy slob for doing so).
Here's the assessment form for PIP. It's not a real form, you have to phone them to get a real form.
Have a read of it. As you're reading it think about different groups of people: people with high levels of anxiety; people with undiagnosed language disabilities; people with learning disability. See the assumptions being made all through the form: support to complete the form is i) available ii) accessible and iii) effective. If you're a healthcare professional have you received training about how to support someone to complete the form? About how to format the evidence most effectively?
Now you need to understand that all that evidence? They ignore it. Not metaphorically, but literally. Emily Dugan wrote about it here.
He described the adviser as telling him: “This wasn’t because I was some sort of super advocate, but because the decision-making was so bad; medical evidence from the practitioners actually treating the client was usually ignored or marginalised, in favour of ‘assessments’ by a disability assessor, who was usually a nurse with no specialist knowledge of the client’s condition, but who had undertaken a short course on assessing disabilities and had examined the client for 30 minutes.”
Brooke told the story of Alice (not her real name), a 54-year old widow he had spoken to with a degenerative eye disease who was registered blind 30 years ago and has profound hearing loss. He said she had “no difficulty” getting disability living allowance at the right rate, but that when applying for PIP she had much more trouble".
“She had to fill in a 56-page form, which she found very difficult," he said. "She also produced doctors’ notes. These included a letter from a professor at Moorfields Eye Hospital which described her eye condition in detail.
“When the assessor called at her home, it was obvious that she had not read any of the doctors’ notes. She set up an eye chart without realising that Alice could not even see the chart, let alone the letters on it.”
He added: “Although she cannot see, she was only awarded a standard rate mobility allowance. The 10-page decision letter contained only one paragraph setting out the reasons. This was in completely generic terms.”
Brooke said that when Alice applied for mandatory reconsideration her daughter called the DWP and the man she spoke to was “so shocked he suggested that Alice hadn’t produced any evidence about her blindness".
“When he was told that there was a letter from the top retinal specialist at Moorfields which explained everything, he said: ‘We don’t look at NHS letters because anybody can make them up.’ He then asked Alice to send him the certificate which stated that she was registered blind. Somehow she managed to find it – it was 30 years old – and she was then upgraded to enhanced rate mobility in double-quick time.”
Anyway, I have cancer and I am dying and there's something called "special rules". Under the Special Rules I make a phone call, I answer some questions about who I am, where I live, whether I can plan journeys or walk 20 meters, and then what my diagnosis is and who my medical team are. And that's it. At the time of writing I'm still waiting to hear back.
This is great for me, but COME ON. Why is it so hard for everyone else to claim PIP?