Here’s a situation I’ve dealt with a couple of times now:
I’ve just got off the phone with a woman who has a schizophrenia diagnosis. She has struggled with her mental health condition over the years and has been sectioned in the past.
She told me that she’d cancelled her Personal Independence Payment face-to-face assessment this week because she was too frightened and stressed to attend. She didn’t know what to do next.
Her partner, who has an Asperger’s diagnosis and severe depression and anxiety, has had a terrible time as he’s gone through the PIP application process this year (you can read that story here and here). His PIP face-to-face assessment was stopped by a Capita assessor who could decided that the applicant couldn’t cope with the face-to-face meeting. No adjustments were made for the applicant’s mental health and no alternatives were put in place so that he could get PIP. His Disability Living Allowance was stopped before a decision was made about his PIP application. Six weeks later, he found out that his PIP application had been denied – on the grounds that he didn’t comply at the face-to-face assessment. This was ridiculous. Then, his Mandatory Reconsideration – the DWP’s review of its own decision to deny him PIP – was carried out without his input or knowledge. His partner was worried about having the same experience and meeting with the same assessor who stopped his assessment (she was told to attend the same assessment centre). So she cancelled her appointment in a panic this week. If things can’t be fixed with a home assessment, or a paper-based assessment if that’s even doable, she’ll lose money that she can’t afford to lose. She’s worried about asking her GP to support a home visit application, because the letters she needs cost £15 a go.
This MUST happen all the time now – people pulling out of benefit applications because they can’t handle the process and they haven’t got the money to pay for the medical paperwork that they need. Another real problem is that there’s nobody really left to help people navigate these terrible benefit applications and the endless calls and paperwork that form such a large part of the application shambles. The CAB is almost impossible to use in the part of the country that these people live in (it’s difficult to use in other parts of the country too, as I’ve reported before). Appointments are scarce, queues are long and ongoing help for complex situations is hard to land. The local welfare advice centre is about to stop supporting cases because the Housing Association that funded the service is pulling the money. This woman did not have anyone to accompany her to the PIP face-to-face assessment she was meant to attend this week. Not so long ago, she might have had some help. A few years back, these two people had a social worker and a local mental health support facility that they could attend. Those services have disappeared.
Their already-small income is disappearing too. I realise that is the government’s aim, but that hardly improves things.
Pity Labour can’t pull its finger out and get on with being some sort of opposition. All these situations drag on and on while that party amuses itself with leadership contests, or whatever the hell it is doing. People in need have been abandoned to a benefits application system that they can’t use. Nobody seems able to stop it.
I agree Kate, this situation is one I’ve both experience personally and supported others through on several occasions this year; the resulting stress and poverty are creating desperation. Can’t help but feel this is all part of the greater Political goal 🙁
It’s the lack of advice and support that is as big an issue as anything… just about nothing in the part of the country we’re dealing with here. There’s going to be nothing left by the time Labour gets its act together and/or over the unbelievable self indulgence we’re seeing atm. There’s nothing left as we speak really.
I am not appealing my PIP decision because I can’t cope with the process, this claim has been going on since May and I am at the end of my rope. I have been able to think of nothing else for all this time and any recovery I could have been working towards has been trashed.
I got a small award from the least amount of points possible even though I should have got more, I’m done with it. I had support from my NHS therapist of 13 years who has supported me with benefit claims since I first needed them 7 years ago. Problem is the local NHS trust wants to make him redundant and close the vital service he provides to over 65 people. Next time I get reviewed I will be on my own and I only got 8 points this time. I am scared, very scared of what will happen to me then.
sorry to say this but the DWP are rubbing their hands with glee for everyone they get to give up claiming
You are indeed correct, welfare reform has nothing what so ever with saving money for the public purse, but everything to do with social engineering.
Its the biggest social experiment this country has undertaken since WW2, pushing the human spirit to the max, its all psychological manipulation through intense fear of losing everything, your home your family and eventually your life through lack of money.
People who live in paralyzed fear are more easily controlled.
I truly despair of the people who are enabling this to continue through lies and deceit by pretending to help. May god help them, because they are going to need it, they should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
Please keep trying ..you deserve to have this babe ..ask at citizenscadvise ..get on the phone keep talking askingvforvhelp…
I supported a woman with a long-term mental health condition to phone to claim PIP. This involved a very long list of questions which will be answered again on the form anyway. Because she cold not get a psychiatric appointment and see a benefits advisor within the time limit to return the form she rang to withdraw her application. Now she has had a letter to say she has been turned down for PIP because she did not return the form! She has to phone again to get this corrected so that she can reapply soon, but the letter caused a lot of unnecessary stress.
Getting PIP is painful. It took me 23 months before I was paid anything (and it was only a 3 year award, so I’ll soon have to start the process again. I dread it.)
The worst part was that the assessor seemed nice, unlike the ESA appointment I had where they asked no questions about my condition at all. So I had some hope, only to find that I’d not been given the right amount of points I should be due. My partner found out that the DWP has actually been illegally forcing assessors to give lower marks to claimants with my mobility needs (ie. I cannot go out alone, and sometimes not at all, because of my mental health.)
If that wasn’t bad enough, I had not 2, nor 3, but had to have 4 reconsiderations. You’re supposed to be allowed to appeal to the courts after 2, but I wasn’t given notice to, just more letters about reconsiderations. When it got to the 4th one, they didn’t even enclose the information for how to appeal.
So then I had to wait 6 months to go to court, which is scary as all hell when you’re agoraphobic. But I had no choice so I chugged a bunch of diazepam, which still wasn’t enough to stop me panicking and shaking. I hate it. I’ve never done anything wrong in my life, but now I’m sick/disabled I’m treated like a criminal. 🙁
Even after I won at court, it still took 3 months or more for them to actually pay me the money I was owed.
It didn’t used to be this way. You used to be believed, rather than threatened and scared and treated like dirt. All the stress of claiming has made it more difficult to recover (because delays mean I have no access to treatment, and I already have anxiety which just gets worse and worse.)
The first time I had to go to court to appeal (for ESA), I was so sure I was going to lose I started throwing out my possessions, planning to kill myself if I failed, because I would have no income and no hope.
I have 4 1/2 months left before I have to claim PIP again. I’m scared I can’t do it. I feel anxiety rising just at the sight of a brown envelope dropping through my letterbox…
I know there are a lot of people worse off than me, and that scares me even more. I’m not just afraid for myself, but for other people too. But I feel so powerless, I wish I could do more to help. I’m so angry at the state of this country, but I’m too sick to do anything.
I have heard that the DWP is working with the banks to ensure that everyone has a bank account that Universal Credit could eventually be paid into.
Banks in their televised advertising promote an image of social responsibility that is entirely absent in the televised ads for legalised loan sharks with hundreds and more commonly thousands of percent Annual Percentage Rates of interest. (The borrowers for the latter are regarded as ‘high risk’ rather than ‘economically vulnerable’.)
So how about challenging the banks to support more pro-actively the people who are more prone to doctors-letters-fees, in the interests of banks and vulnerable customers ‘working in partnership’?
Am absolutely at my wits end with worry like many people we know everything is stacked against us all. Am agoraphobic with OCD panic attacks & suicidal depression. I cannot even get to my GP let alone for any PIP assessments & I haven’t been to him/her in years; just cannot cope loading myself with more anxiety than I got at any one moment as it is. Also help is none existent ( & that has been that way for years ) so I just kind of get on with it, which in all probability will be the case when they come for me. There is no way am going out for any PIP assessment & will have to get a home appointment, which to my understanding in itself is almost if at all impossible. Also the PIP is really a points ticking box where mental health is not really covered ( as am to understand ) so on top of everything my whole condition/illness will not get me enough points to win even if I could go to the assessments or someone home visited me to tick boxes, am stuffed like many others & this situation is by design not by accident so I’ve kind of given up & be damned as the saying goes.
I lost my entire PIP award on reassessment, because I didn’t have anyone with me. There was no-one to witness the assessors lies on his report, and there was no-one to speak for me in the tribunal hearing when I couldn’t verbalise. The stress of it all gave me a mental breakdown and suicidal thoughts, and I’m now at the point of having to default on the credit I had to live on for the 15 months (plus 5 more since the tribunal decision) the whole process took. I honestly don’t know how to carry on. All for the want of a few hours time from someone who knows how the system works.
Ex-Disability Minister Justin Tomlinson has been suspended from the House of Commons for leaking to Wonga a draft report about regulating the ‘payday loans industry’. His excuse for doing so? The Independent reports: “In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday morning he said that he sent the report to the payday loan company because he believed action needed to be taken on payday loan companies.” That excuse as well as the reason for giving Wonga advanced warning might be termed ‘damage limitation’.
The same Independent article reports:
“Research by the charity Scope has found that people with disabilities are significantly more likely to turn to payday loans than people without them.
“18 per cent of people with disabilities have used so-called ‘high cost’ lending compared with 5 per cent of non-disabled people, according to that study.”
Prevention of the need for disabled people turning to such rip-off merchants should have been part of his legacy as Disability Minister, but that has clearly not been the case. Maybe someone needs to look more closely at his ‘register of interests’?
But then again, in terms of his prospectus for becoming a paid lobbyist for rip-off merchants in future, maybe the only thing he has ‘done wrong’ so far has been to get caught out? (And of course, his legacy as Disability Minister has meant that a great many disabled people have been caught out by worsening poverty.)
I’m giving up too fighting goliath I cane be bothered anymore its been since March aye we are all liars