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Thread: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

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    Default Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    Rather than drag this across another thread which it was never aimed to do I thought I would start this separately

    I was on disability living allowance last year I changed over to Personal Independence Payment and I got the higher rate for care and the higher rate for mobility

    I had heard a lot of anecdotal stories about ATOS and capita so I spent a considerable time researching it before I filled my form in to get it back before the deadline

    Both companies use clinicians as assessor the problem is I have cervical myelopathy and the only condition that could correctly assess me would be a spinal neuro physiotherapist a nurse or a mental health nurse or a musculoskeletal physiotherapist would not have a clue where to start neither would the average doctor this is where the system fails you have people looking at your disease or your independence that do not have a clue about what is actually wrong in the first place . This means that their conception is based on what they see not on what they know

    Now the Department of Work and Pensions publish a very comprehensive guide on the website to filling out the very long form and when you analyse the form you find that the same question is repeated into a 3 places but from a slightly different point of view .

    The care component allows for the fact that you could microwave a meal that has already been prepared but you couldn't prepare a meal from scratch I am tetraplegic and to peel the potato I would probably end up in A&E with knife cuts this goes through the whole system of the amount of care that you need care in this area cost £18 an hour I am fortunate in the fact that my daughter claims care allowance which I think works out at less than £2 an hour and she does quite a lot of hours of care for me each week

    The one that most people seem to fail on is the mobility rate and to get Motability cars you need to be on the higher rate . If you can walk the 50 yards to your car from your front door using a walking stick you will not qualify you will get 0 points under the Old disability living allowance system it didn't depend on your ability it depended on your disease this meant that people who had recovered from a minor stroke or recovering to a certain point we're able to claim the mobility allowance the new rules under Pip are much harder 2 justify . If you can walk further than 10 m you will get 0 points now believe me 10 m isn't far to get to the car that I have outside I have to use the wheelchair that is about 25 m away from the door

    The biggest batch of people that seem to get their claim rejected tend to be people that have the mobility which is what you can score the higher rate on or the inability to plan a journey which will also give you a higher rate payments no these are people that often have the mobility to walk hundreds of yards but cannot plan how to do it is a little bit more complicated than that but the detail is available on the government website , what this did is it put a lot of people who have bipolar or certain degrees of autism right out of the claim zone . Whether that's right or wrong I don't know I don't understand mental illness too good but I do know that some of the people that have had minor Strokes which was originally covered do have some mental agility problems with it

    When I knew that I would have to change over from DLA to Pip I join a couple of Facebook pages which were basically people complaining about why they have been rejected and I started to analyse that data not the 1.6 million claimants or the 70% of the rejects that had been successful on appeal but certainly a good number of people

    When you look at what the major problems are with claims being rejected it turns out that people couldn't be bothered to read the guidance form and therefore filled in the actual form incorrectly then when they got to the assessment a which I was never called on the grounds that my medical evidence was sufficient it's only when your medical evidence is not Enough that you are called in , many of the people then tried to correct the failures in their forms to the assessor and the assessor thought there's another one that we can reject and this seems to have happened I have heard again anecdotal stories that the assessors were paid on a bonus for how many rejections they could do but I have never been able to find any evidence of this

    It's a good fair system and the vast majority of people that I was in Stoke Mandeville national spinal injuries unit with last year who applied for the personal injuries payment and use the services of a couple of spinal charities namely backup and Aspire were virtually always successful

    Most of the people rejected seem to have filled in their own forms or helped Help by relatives and a lot of them as I said earlier did not bother to read the guidance notes which is a huge mistake you are then fighting retrospectively

    One of the greatest form fillers at the National spinal injuries unit was a very lovely lady who I believe was called Amanda from the Department of Work and Pensions and as a visiting officer she would help you fill your form in and when she helped you fill your form in you got it right

    But obviously I have only seen a small sample of that 1.6 million people and I would happily listen because it's in my interest to know where claims are rejected my claim will be up in another 15 or 18 months and I'll have to go through it again as to seriously why they were rejected on it

    So I don't say that people are wrong in saying there is a vast amount of rejections and I don't say that Atos and capita are actually ideal companies personally some of the stories I've heard from informed sources it leaves me very concerned about their abilities . You can do if you feel insecure about the interview taking a recording device and record what has been said

    And I am quite open to any questions on my claim personally the other thing to remember is a lot of disabled people who have serious disabilities when asked to perform by the assessor do their best to perform which then goes against them when they ask you can you walk 10 metres and you say yes and you try for 12 you've just gone to metres past the right marks you have to bear that in mind

    Politically it doesn't matter which party is in power at the end of the day the system belong to the Department of Work and Pensions and they do not have the Manpower to do the assessments themselves or the skills so they're quite right in farming it out it is just that it's who they farmed out to
    Rob Page R855150 - British & Commonwealth Shipping ( 1965 - 1973 ) Gulf Oil -( 1973 - 1975 ) Sealink ( 1975 - 1986 )

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    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    ##what an interesting precis rob and in all honesty so well put ...i read it and was interested from beginning to end thanks for taking the time to give some true facts ..not flipperty jibberty second hand newspaper reports..which are so often biased by the writers...regards cappy

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    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    Quote Originally Posted by robpage View Post
    Rather than drag this across another thread which it was never aimed to do I thought I would start this separately

    I was on disability living allowance last year I changed over to Personal Independence Payment and I got the higher rate for care and the higher rate for mobility

    I had heard a lot of anecdotal stories about ATOS and capita so I spent a considerable time researching it before I filled my form in to get it back before the deadline

    Both companies use clinicians as assessor the problem is I have cervical myelopathy and the only condition that could correctly assess me would be a spinal neuro physiotherapist a nurse or a mental health nurse or a musculoskeletal physiotherapist would not have a clue where to start neither would the average doctor this is where the system fails you have people looking at your disease or your independence that do not have a clue about what is actually wrong in the first place . This means that their conception is based on what they see not on what they know

    Now the Department of Work and Pensions publish a very comprehensive guide on the website to filling out the very long form and when you analyse the form you find that the same question is repeated into a 3 places but from a slightly different point of view .

    The care component allows for the fact that you could microwave a meal that has already been prepared but you couldn't prepare a meal from scratch I am tetraplegic and to peel the potato I would probably end up in A&E with knife cuts this goes through the whole system of the amount of care that you need care in this area cost £18 an hour I am fortunate in the fact that my daughter claims care allowance which I think works out at less than £2 an hour and she does quite a lot of hours of care for me each week

    The one that most people seem to fail on is the mobility rate and to get Motability cars you need to be on the higher rate . If you can walk the 50 yards to your car from your front door using a walking stick you will not qualify you will get 0 points under the Old disability living allowance system it didn't depend on your ability it depended on your disease this meant that people who had recovered from a minor stroke or recovering to a certain point we're able to claim the mobility allowance the new rules under Pip are much harder 2 justify . If you can walk further than 10 m you will get 0 points now believe me 10 m isn't far to get to the car that I have outside I have to use the wheelchair that is about 25 m away from the door

    The biggest batch of people that seem to get their claim rejected tend to be people that have the mobility which is what you can score the higher rate on or the inability to plan a journey which will also give you a higher rate payments no these are people that often have the mobility to walk hundreds of yards but cannot plan how to do it is a little bit more complicated than that but the detail is available on the government website , what this did is it put a lot of people who have bipolar or certain degrees of autism right out of the claim zone . Whether that's right or wrong I don't know I don't understand mental illness too good but I do know that some of the people that have had minor Strokes which was originally covered do have some mental agility problems with it

    When I knew that I would have to change over from DLA to Pip I join a couple of Facebook pages which were basically people complaining about why they have been rejected and I started to analyse that data not the 1.6 million claimants or the 70% of the rejects that had been successful on appeal but certainly a good number of people

    When you look at what the major problems are with claims being rejected it turns out that people couldn't be bothered to read the guidance form and therefore filled in the actual form incorrectly then when they got to the assessment a which I was never called on the grounds that my medical evidence was sufficient it's only when your medical evidence is not Enough that you are called in , many of the people then tried to correct the failures in their forms to the assessor and the assessor thought there's another one that we can reject and this seems to have happened I have heard again anecdotal stories that the assessors were paid on a bonus for how many rejections they could do but I have never been able to find any evidence of this

    It's a good fair system and the vast majority of people that I was in Stoke Mandeville national spinal injuries unit with last year who applied for the personal injuries payment and use the services of a couple of spinal charities namely backup and Aspire were virtually always successful

    Most of the people rejected seem to have filled in their own forms or helped Help by relatives and a lot of them as I said earlier did not bother to read the guidance notes which is a huge mistake you are then fighting retrospectively

    One of the greatest form fillers at the National spinal injuries unit was a very lovely lady who I believe was called Amanda from the Department of Work and Pensions and as a visiting officer she would help you fill your form in and when she helped you fill your form in you got it right

    But obviously I have only seen a small sample of that 1.6 million people and I would happily listen because it's in my interest to know where claims are rejected my claim will be up in another 15 or 18 months and I'll have to go through it again as to seriously why they were rejected on it

    So I don't say that people are wrong in saying there is a vast amount of rejections and I don't say that Atos and capita are actually ideal companies personally some of the stories I've heard from informed sources it leaves me very concerned about their abilities . You can do if you feel insecure about the interview taking a recording device and record what has been said

    And I am quite open to any questions on my claim personally the other thing to remember is a lot of disabled people who have serious disabilities when asked to perform by the assessor do their best to perform which then goes against them when they ask you can you walk 10 metres and you say yes and you try for 12 you've just gone to metres past the right marks you have to bear that in mind

    Politically it doesn't matter which party is in power at the end of the day the system belong to the Department of Work and Pensions and they do not have the Manpower to do the assessments themselves or the skills so they're quite right in farming it out it is just that it's who they farmed out to
    Rob,
    I helped my daughter who has mental health and physical issues, you are right that they do repeat questions in the hope of tripping you up. The issues we were faced with were numerous and very worrying to the point that my daughter became suicidal. It took a big effort to get her to ATOS in Gateshead but the most noticeable thing I saw before I even got in the door was , no disabled parking at all, no wheelchair access and the main entrance was so narrow it would have the skin off a wheelchair user.
    My brother in law is severely asthmatic, has to take insulin by needle and is subsequently almost blind due to his diabetes. He always worked (manual graft) but had to give up due to his blindness. He cant drive obviously but did go to a special college in Durham for disabled people to try and re skill but never got another job strangely.
    He went for his PIP assessment and was failed, but on his return home he told us he recognised the interviewer; she had been a receptionist at the college, not a member of the teaching staff even.
    The system stinks and I firmly believe they, or their employing companies, get bonus based on rejections. I do not support whingers and skivers, but many disabilities can be unseen.
    When he went for his

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    Keith at Tregenna's Avatar
    Keith at Tregenna Guest

    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    I have asked so many times can you define walking, in three years have never received
    any kind of answer.

    I have more faith in the tribunal.

    K.

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    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    Quote Originally Posted by Tony Taylor View Post
    Rob,
    The system stinks and I firmly believe they, or their employing companies, get bonus based on rejections. I do not support whingers and skivers, but many disabilities can be unseen.
    When he went for his



    The Government were paying was it 50 Million a year to save money from the disabled.

    Add on admin, court costs and is it 70 percent of what is proved owed refunded,

    And people suffer during the time period, many actually passing away.

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    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    the non visible disabilities are the hardest to define and seem to be at the majority of rejections that I have seen complaints about , the assessor should always be a healthcare professional , but a MSK Physiotherapist may have no understanding of autism , that is a huge failure , the charities are a great help with the form

    walking is defined and separated in the guidance into three categories unaided , with aids , with appliances , but only one distance

    So my question on walking would be how far did you declare that you was able to walk Aided or unaided or with appliances it is the distance that is the important thing

    My declaration just so that I am transparently answering this is and remain so 0 metres I stand-up take a step I will fall over this is verified by a neurosurgeon and a senior neuro physiotherapist this is probably one of the reasons that I never had to attend an assessment and that Atos accepted my claim has they do in many cases and I would say from the knowledge that I have cleaned the vast majority of cases

    There is also negativity from people who are disabled with mobility problems over people obtaining blue badges that would cover autism and mental difficulties because the argument being from the disabled is it isn't that your child can't walk the 20 m to the shops it's that they will play up along the way I have a severely disabled great grandson and realise that when a child has Aspergers as well as cerebral palsy then the problems aren't always about mobility
    Last edited by robpage; 13th December 2018 at 07:21 AM.
    Rob Page R855150 - British & Commonwealth Shipping ( 1965 - 1973 ) Gulf Oil -( 1973 - 1975 ) Sealink ( 1975 - 1986 )

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    We had a health assessor here yesterday Rob as asked to see one . It was not for myself but my wife as she was already on their previous assessment list as had help in housework when recuperating from two replacement hips, a couple of years ago,but she cancelled them when she recovered. The only way we could do it was through her previous having had help. However the garden is too large for me to handle now, and once on my knees have trouble getting up , unless someone shouts beers up ! The rules for such jobs are full of rules of safety and not for appearance when claiming for gardening. It is considered a safety factor when walking on grass too long. If it has to be cut it has to be where people walk. Fortuanetly our house is built on a corner and from the garage drive to the front door have to walk over a large part of the lawn so comes under safety. I didn’t mention one could come through the garage and into the house though as didn’t want to upset his deliberations. They don’t do any weeding which was the real issue . But if I give them some weed killer they will spray on, so I am not complaining. So at the moment am pulling out the weeds myself, these resemble large cabbages and there are hundreds of them. So with a bit of luck may get the worse of them out before my back gives out. As I say it wasn’t me being assessed it was the wife. Also if you take more than 5 pills a day you are assumed to be liable to dizziness, I take 9 usually washed down with a can of beer. Pleased it was the wife’s assessment and not mine.Anyhow I assume we are getting help for my wife’s aching back which is really my back in fact but her assessment. Sounds weird I know my pension I get from the UK as said previous they are still finding out frequently if I am still here , so with the recent increase of two more tablets it may increase my life span a bit longer. It is my aim in life to break the chancellor of the Exchequers next budget by him having to pay me longer than expected. 73 pounds a week for 5 years is 18980 pounds which on top of your Brexit Bill will surely give him the screaming ab dabs . Whether he is right or left wing inclined by then. Cheers JS
    Last edited by j.sabourn; 13th December 2018 at 07:55 AM.

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    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    I think one of the major problems with the assessments for personal independence John is particularly as Tony pointed out earlier those problems with the non-visible disabilities and I think one of the hardest of these to workout is that of PTSD I remember as a child a couple of people in the small village where I lived having had what was called shellshock now PTSD who is match more widely diagnosed and I am certain that through your experiences many people who have been through that are suffering from that post-traumatic stress disorder what others have just said sod it and got on with it I must admit that I don't understand what is the trigger and what is the ability to pass through that enormous amount of stress . Having child with several people who had been torpedoed during the war and catch the Drift some seem to resolve it with alcohol some seems to revolve it without . I would not like to be an assessor because when you've got somebody in front of you who appears able-bodied looks able-bodied and acts able-bodied but has all kinds of invisible problems it must be extremely difficult unless you have spent many years training in that kind of discipline I therefore blame companies like ATOS and capita for putting the wrong assessor in the wrong assessment in fact I would suggest some of them are totally out of their depth
    Rob Page R855150 - British & Commonwealth Shipping ( 1965 - 1973 ) Gulf Oil -( 1973 - 1975 ) Sealink ( 1975 - 1986 )

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    Default Re: Personal independence payment and Disability Living Allowance

    We have the National Disability Insurance Scheme here in Oz.
    Depending on your level of disability determines what your annual allowance will be.
    It is there to provide all you need for a comfortable life, so if you need a new wheel chair of similar then you can use the money for that.
    The money is held in an account for which you have a manager who is supposed to do your bidding when it comes to your needs.

    The local community healthy service is one of the providers and takes a management fee for doing so.

    One man I know with severe MS, so bad he is wheel chair bound asked for cooling unit in his bed room.
    Told as they are considered to be 'White Goods' he cannot use the money for such.

    But when he spoke with the ombudsman covering this system all things suddenly changed, you have to ask the right people.
    Happy daze John in Oz.

    Life is too short to blend in.

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    World Traveller

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    #8... Rob I have no doubt that as regards PTSD that myself and others at my particular time had it. I received 1 telephone call did I want to see someone regarding this. I said no thank you I was alright , not because I was trying to be a big or in my case a small ruff tuffy seaman, but because I knew I would be unemployable to most shipowners as having a mental drawback. Two of my crew never went back to sea again. 3 of them came with me on a couple of ships I went on afterwards , wherther this was because they felt safer in the knowledge that there was safety in numbers and with people who knew their feelings as had similar I don’t know, I carried those feelings for years and years and to a certain extent do so even today. There were at least 1 definite suicide among the survivors and a probable further 2 shortly after the event. In later years other deaths have been reported on this site one by John Arton and although on a different ship two seamen were lost from that ship. This death was reported as normal, but if so was very early, and I have my suspicions it was prompted by other factors. I know of at least one other as was told by that persons son in law when working out here on a rig that he drank himself lto death, the person who told me was not aware that I had been present at the bonfire night. A few years ago I was taken into hospital with stomach cramps , put into an isolation ward and told they suspected it was some tropical disease , I knew better as was the 25 th anniversary of the same event , and suspected myself it was normal muscle contraction on as usual reliving the event. When I tried to explain this without saying too much I was given a phone number to ring which I assumed was a trick cyclist . So the first week home I rang up , and the first thing the voice asked on the other end was did I have a firearm in the house, so I put the phone down. In most cases PTSD depends on your own character and background, you can either live with it or you cant..If you can’t that’s when you need treatment or you take the easy way out yourself. When I went back to Aberdeen last July I went to the Maritime Museum to get the address of one of the crew who was
    with me on later ships, and had deposited his GM as an exhibit. I was informed he was dead. I said at the time I didn’t believe it and said I would find out for myself. I never did as thinking about it I don’t want to know if he died by his own hand or not. He was one of the indestructible ones and will always remember him as such. If he is really dead would prefer to think of him falling off the end of his pint glass. Cheers JS.
    Last edited by j.sabourn; 14th December 2018 at 06:58 AM.

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