And I’m back…with another example of the flawed and downright nonsensical systems people must use to apply for benefits.
This post is about an application for Personal Independence Payment. What a drawn-out mess this one has been:
Regular readers will know that I’ve written several articles this year about Paul, an Oldham man in his 60s. Paul has a heart condition and a defibrillator implant. He has problems with pain and walking, and depression.
Paul is also homeless – or as near to homeless as people can be without actually sleeping on the street. When we first met this year, Paul was living in a tiny, grotty, falling-apart static caravan on an Oldham campsite. First Choice Homes, the local homelessness office, considered Paul adequately housed in that caravan. More recently, Paul’s been living in temporary hotel accommodation. He was moved, because a man living on the caravan site threatened him. I mention Paul’s housing situation, because unstable, insecure housing has a real bearing on people’s attempts to claim benefits. We’ll get to that.
Let’s look at the dreadful PIP application “system” as Paul has experienced it. A person of Paul’s age and with his health and housing problems should NOT have to struggle as he has to get support. Nonetheless, this often-hopeless PIP application system is considered adequate for sick and disabled people who are most in need. This has to change. Now.
Until the end of last year, Paul received Disability Living Allowance. In December 2016, the DWP sent Paul a letter to say his DLA would end (DLA is being phased out and pretty much everyone will have their DLA claim closed and have to apply for PIP). Paul had to apply for the new Personal Independence Payment if he still wanted disability support.
Applying for PIP meant Paul had to take these steps:
– Request an application form
– Gather medical certificates and doctors’ letters to support his application
– Attend a face-to-face assessment to explain to an assessor why he should receive PIP.
You may think these steps were/are straightforward. They are not.
Paul experienced four major problems with his application:
– The DWP didn’t know which papers it had received from him. This confused and concerned Paul greatly, because he’d posted sensitive medical information
– Paul wasn’t sent a date and time for a face-to-face assessment. He says he was never told that an assessment date had been set. The DWP closed his claim for missing the face-to-face appointment he didn’t know about. Paul was denied PIP and had to start his application again. He had no recourse. (I’ve been in touch with another person who had a similar experience. John Pring at Disability News Service has reported on this problem in detail).
– A second face-to-face appointment for the second claim was cancelled at the last minute. This set Paul’s application back another fortnight.
– Texts that Paul received from the DWP made absolutely no sense. Two texts said the DWP hadn’t received Paul’s application forms – forms he’d sent. Shortly after those texts arrived (half-an-hour after in one case), Paul received texts which said the DWP actually HAD received the forms. I’ve seen these texts. This “no, we haven’t received your sensitive information – oh, hang on, yes, we have,” stuff really upsets people who must trust these bureaucracies with sensitive medical details.
Let’s look at this dysfunction in more detail. Remember: this is a system which people with learning difficulties, mental health conditions and support needs must use. Little wonder that people give up on it.
Since December last year, Paul has:
– Received a letter from the DWP which told him his DLA payments would end and to apply for PIP
– Requested a PIP application form as instructed
– Received a text from the DWP which advised him that he’d be sent a form called “how your disability affects you.”
– Received a text saying the form had been sent
– Filled in the form
– Sent the form to the DWP
– Received a text saying the DWP hadn’t received the form.
– Received a text few days later saying the DWP had received Paul’s form and that he would be contacted for a face-to-face assessment if the DWP decided he must attend one
– Waited to hear about the face-to-face assessment
– Heard nothing about the face-to-face assessment
– Continued to wait to receive date and time details for the face-to-face assessment
– Heard nothing about a date and time for the face-to-face assessment.
– Received notification to say he would not get PIP, because he did not attend the face-to-face assessment that he hadn’t been told about.
Because he missed that face-to-face assessment, Paul:
– Had his DLA stopped
– Had to make a new application for PIP
– Received a text advising him that he’d be sent a form
– Received a text saying the form had been sent
– Completed the form and sent it in
– Received a text saying the DWP had not received Paul’s completed form.
– Received a text saying the DWP HAD received Paul’s completed form (this text arrived half an hour after the text which said the DWP had not received the form)
– Received a letter telling Paul to attend a face-to-face assessment in Rochdale in mid-July
– Received a call the day before the assessment to say that assessment was cancelled, because the assessor was sick. Paul would need to wait another fortnight for a new assessment.
– Received a letter telling him to attend a rescheduled face-to-face assessment at the end of July.
– Attended the face-to-face assessment (I went with him)
– Waited to hear the outcome of the assessment and whether or not he would be entitled to any money.
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I trust I have those details in order. I don’t mind saying that the letters and texts which accompanied this circus did my head in and that some steps in the thing were anyone’s guess. I’ve been through PIP applications and appeals with people in the past that were utterly nonsensical.
On and on it went – well over six months after Paul was first told to apply for PIP. Paul had no DLA or PIP money while this all went on. Paul received his last DLA payment in April.
You see the point. The hurdles and obstacles can be farcical.
People with serious health problems are expected to cope with all of this. People with learning, literacy, spectrum and cognitive difficulties are expected to cope with all of this. People who are homeless, or living in emergency housing, or mobile homes are at a particular disadvantage. There are too many letters, texts and instructions to keep track of. People in insecure housing often use central or Care Of postal addresses which aren’t reliable. They change addresses suddenly. People run out of phone credit, or they lose phones when they move, or they change phones. They find keeping up with a complex and often dysfunctional benefits bureaucracy extremely difficult.
I’ve certainly spoken with people who decided it was easier to go without. Doubtless that’s the point of the exercise as far as government is concerned.
I would say this as well: when mainstream news media rattles on about ending (ha) austerity and putting funds back into social security, it needs to shout as loudly about fixing the terrible systems that people must use to apply for social security. You can’t continue to have a benefits system where a successful application is about an applicant’s ability to prevail, rather than an applicant’s needs.
It’s a terrible amount of bureaucracy for anyone to have to deal with, especially if you’re not well and in need of help right away. And I wouldn’t consider a caravan to be adequate unless it’s a really good posh one with gas fire etc. I lived in a small old caravan once for a while back in the 80’s , parked around the back of a pub literally a stone’s throw away from the M62 high up on the outskirts of Huddersfield, and they are not very warm in cold weather and you get a lot of condensation on the walls. Only adequate on a temporary basis if you’re stuck. Mine didn’t even have electricity apart from a wagon battery for lights. I don’t think I had any heating either. Not good.
Caravan in this case is a right old shitter. Literally too small to lie down or stand up in. Might be different if it was a late model Winnebago but that’s not quite where we are with these things.
Kate,
I think that there is a method in this madness.
The purpose is to make as many people in need feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible if and when they need financial support.
That, of course, fits in perfectly with the agenda being led by the Tory government
and the purpose of their agenda is to ease the financial burden on the state.
But I thought that the government is supposed to provide for those who can’t do so for themselves?
A man that is has a heart condition and a defibrillator implant and is also homeless sounds like a person that “needs support” but judging by the many hoops he had to jump through seems that the government doesn’t want to support British citizens in need.
What has our proud country come to if vulerable people like Paul almost have to beg for support from the state?
The Tory agenda is *ostensibly* to ease the financial burden on the State, but is really about transfering more wealth to the Rich. That’s the whole purpose of Austerity. Make no mistake, thisis Class War.
Here’s what happened with my shift from DLA to PIP (the time intervals are simplified, the process took over 2 years to complete). Grab a mug of tea, it’s a saga…
Got DLA renewal form. Filled in application. DWP receives first thing on Monday a.m, should have been in by last thing Friday. Decision Maker won’t accept illness & anxiety as a reason for it being ‘late’.
DWP agrees to use my DLA application paperwork as the basis for new PIP application, instead.
4 months later, I submit more medical paperwork, DWP doesn’t acknowledge. I chase and they finally acknowledge receiving the paperwork, but say I don’t have any ongoing application for me (for PIP or DLA).
Repeatedly contact them in writing about the application I’d made, but get no response.
Contact my local MP, Kate Hoey.
Kate Hoey’s assistant contacts DWP. Repeated assurances from DWP that the matter will be resolved. DWP assures MP that all paperwork is being dealt with and issue should be resolved quickly.
Finally, MP’s assistant gets the truth… Over a year after my initial application, DWP admits all application paperwork had been sent to be archived in Cardiff (because it was a ‘complicated’ application and nobody knew how to deal with it). Cardiff DWP had then, for some reason, shredded it.
All the DWP assurances to my MP were baseless – my application had been destroyed quite soon after they received it.
Received new PIP application form (backdated to the start of this hellish process). Filled it in and returned it. Assessment scheduled for an office 40 miles away (I’m in central London but I was told to go to Tunbridge Wells).
MP’s assistant gets in touch with DWP and gets a home visit rescheduled.
Two assessment appointments cancelled due to ‘illness’ on the part of the assessor, including one appointment cancelled less than 15 minutes before scheduled time, but I didn’t find out ’til I called DWP about the assessor who’d not turned up.
Third time lucky, an assessor arrives at my place. Assessment takes less than 30 minutes, very relaxed & friendly. Feels like the assessment has been predetermined – assessor doesn’t even bother waiting for my answers to some questions, he answers them himself!
Each scheduled assessment had caused me lots of anxiety running up to it.
Got confirmation of successful PIP application, at roughly the same rate as my previous DLA, though it didn’t quite reflect my situation as I’d become more disabled by the time of the assessment (another reason I think the assessment was predetermined).
Getting payment through took another 2 months, despite the urgency – I’d not received ANY disability benefit for 2 years at this point.
As the payment was quite substantial, every part of the payment process needed authorisation. Some DWP officers, as it turned out, didn’t know how to do this so set my payment order aside rather than deal with it (echoes of the problem in the first bloody place).
2 years and 1 month after my DLA renewal application, I received my first PIP payment. I’m dreading 2019, when I have to start the process all over again.
I’m not sure what would have happened –
1. Without a huge amount of help from Kate Hoey and her team – I would never have received the payments I was entitled to.
2. Without the help of some close friends, I would have had absolutely no money for food, after paying electric/gas/water etc bills out of my JSA/ESA.
What I learnt –
1. Some DWP officers tell lies.
2. Some DWP officers have no idea how to do their job.
Help yourself by –
1. Trying to keep all correspondence in writing.
2. Send everything by Recorded Delivery.
3. Keep written records of all phone calls – date, time. person you spoke to, what was discussed. Do this immediately after the phone call, before you forget anything.
All in all, a fucking nightmare, and I’m not homeless (yet).
That is incredible. How is anybody supposed to cope with that?
The sad fact is many vulnerable people take their own lives when faced with similar unjust treatment from the DWP.
My childhood friend ended up doing exactly that when the DWP
turned against him.
One has to be incredibly strong and patient when dealing with the DWP otherwise you end up crushed and downhearted and that’s when claimants really need moral support
but sadly sometimes that isn’t easy to find especially when people are too busy trying to deal with their own issues.
When I think about men like George Freeman
it makes my blood boil with absolute rage because it is men like him that are responsible for the difficulty people have when making claims for benefit.
there have been more deaths due to welfare reforms than terrorism. Makes you wonder who the real ‘terrorists’ are.
T,
I am just lost for words to express how I feel when I try to imagine what it must have been like for you as you patiently endured the hell you were put through by the DWP?
By right you should be able to bring a case against the DWP for putting you through so much without justification and to add insult to injury it turns out that they knowingly gave you false information
even though you were entitled to know the truth.
Claimants are obliged to reveal everything to the DWP
and yet in your case, they withheld the truth from you which exposed you to stress anxiety and almost unbearable torment.
The least they could do is to offer you a sincere apology and severely punish the people responsible for putting you through Hell.
I hope they were copies and not the originals? I would always print a copy of any additional info even if it is a hand written letter from a GP in a sealed envelope, I would open it and copy it then print out the copy. I wouldn’t trust them with originals as far as I can throw them!
I would tell them that if they wanted a copy it would cost them £50 and put in a complaint about them losing information and forms that could lose myself money.
As Paul is in his sixties he should be able to claim 100% Pension Credit (currently available from about age 63) and tell the Jobcentre to do one. I’m in the same boat – heart failure, implanted cardioverter/defibrillator, aphasia (consequence of stroke). Fortunately I was able to claim Pension Credit, spurred on by a letter from Atos that despite almost dying in hospital from acute heart failure and the effects of a full stroke I was required to attend their assessment centre in another town despite I was basically housebound. I was awarded 100% Pension Credit until my 65th birthday when I claimed my State pension which is still topped up with PC.
Regarding ICDs, the device costs around £20,000 so the NHS won’t fit on a whim. Anyone fitted with an ICD is to be deemed seriously ill. To have an ICD fitted privately costs £50,000 – cost of device and associated surgery.
The DWP as always, are playing a double game here. On the one hand insisting they are trying to help people, while on the other making it as difficult and awkward as possible to claim benefits. So you have people providing the same information again and again, while the DWP just yawn and look the other way.
Yes and meanwhile, people work up more and more debt to the state – the DWP through loans, HAs and housing trusts in rent arrears and councils in council tax debt, court fines and all the rest. Time for all this to stop. Even snooty types who think they’ll never be affected should wonder why their tax is going on this crap.
Hang on a minute, Ive just remembered that a couple ofyears ago a mate of mine was living in a small rather grotty caravan that he rented on a caravan site on the outskirts of Bradford, but he was refused Housing Benefit ‘cos they said it didnt qualify as a permanent residence, yet this guy Paul is being classed as not homeless. They seem to want it both ways. You can’t win!