Dealing with a couple of people who are waiting to find out if they’ll get a PIP appeal tribunal hearing and a date for that hearing if they do get one.
Does anyone know how long people typically have to wait to hear back after they’ve requested an appeal, or is this another part of things that is all over the place.
If you’d rather email than leave a comment on this, contact details are here.
Okay.
Here’s another example of the utter dysfunction of the benefits system, from its myriad useless angles. I think we can safely say that we’ve reached the point where hardly an aspect of this bureaucracy is fit for purpose (see other articles I’ve posted recently for plenty more on that. The whole thing is out of control. It doesn’t even make sense). I’m pretty sure that I could run a better system myself out of a garage, pissed. I reckon I get two or three calls and/or emails a week about the sort of monumental bureaucratic mess described below at the moment. These situations require endless phone calls (and ages spent on hold), letters, challenges, visits to welfare advisers (if anyone can find them) and appeals to MPs and councillors. It never, ever ends.
These sorts of situations are also almost impossible for one person to deal with. That point needs to be made loud and clear. The calls take hours, as do the letters, application forms and time needed to source support information. Calls go unanswered and letters and certificates go missing, or aren’t acknowledged for ages. There’s no way that people can sort out problems of this magnitude by themselves these days. Finding a welfare rights adviser with the time to help is often just not a starter. Those services have gone, or are so oversubscribed that people no longer bother to try. I know this, because I’ve queued myself at places like the CAB and found all appointments gone by 9am.
So.
I’ve just been talking with a woman I know well. She is 22 years old and has a four-year-old daughter. This young woman has about £20 a week to live on at the moment. Here’s a list of the way things are going for her with benefit claims at the moment. This could be anybody’s story, too. God knows I hear plenty similar.
In the past month or so, this young woman has:
– Had her child tax credit stopped, purportedly because she has another person living with her. She has never heard of this person. In her life. You’ll will know, of course, that many other people are dealing with the same sort of situation and the collapse of this part of the system.
This begs a number of questions, one of which I would like answered as a matter of priority. Shouldn’t the DWP, HMRC, councils and their various useless provider companies be required to provide evidence of all this alleged cohabitation BEFORE accusations are made and benefits are actually withdrawn? What is this system where an accusation is made and money simply stopped? Why is the onus on people who receive such payments to prove that they’re innocent? In the last week or so, my phone really has been buzzing with calls and emails from people who are experiencing these sorts of problems. There’s a guy I’m working with in north west London at the moment who has been accused of sharing his home with some bloke he’s simply never heard of. His council says that the DWP has imparted this information and that it’s his responsibility to prove that the bureaucrats are wrong. If he doesn’t, his housing benefit will be cut. Wtf. Really. Homelessness lies at the end of that path.
I digress. Continue reading
A little more about mental health conditions and unemployment as described by people who are experiencing those things in our hardbitten day and age:
I was at Oldham jobcentre last week. Outside, I spoke for some time with Peter*, a man in his 40s who struck up a conversation because he was nervous about going into the jobcentre for a meeting he’d been called to.
In the course of our discussion, Peter said he had depression so severe that he was hospitalised earlier this year for it. (It seemed that his jobcentre adviser knew about this depression. When Peter came out of the meeting later on, he showed me a leaflet about counselling sessions with numbers to call. His jobcentre adviser had given him the leaflet). Peter was unkempt on the day we met. He was dressed in sweatpants, a faded top and the soft pull-on shoes that some people wear as slippers. He said that he lived in a council house with his brother and mum. He was articulate, although I found him hard to follow at times, because we jumped between topics. I’ve transcribed the conversation below. I’m writing this to give you an idea of the way that people speak.
I’m also writing this to give you an idea of the DWP’s pettiness and threats. Such a lot of government communication with the unemployed takes this petty, but threatening, tone. We’ve seen that many, many times before, of course, but another look won’t go amiss. Peter showed me the letter that he’d received which called him to that day’s jobcentre meeting. He let me take a photo of it. I’ve posted a copy below. You’ll see this letter says that Peter’s Universal Credit will be docked if he missed his meeting without good reason (whatever that is these days) – he’ll lose £10.40 per day. It was a crappy threat on a crappy piece of paper – contempt written all over the thing. This is the sort of letter that the DWP sends to people with serious mental health conditions:
The threat certainly had its intended effect.
“It’s a good job I come down today, because that’s what would have happened to me, you know,” Peter said. “Sanctions, that’s what happened [to me] last year. Like it’s a long time – 91 days.”
This ought to tell you something about the criminal waste of time and money that is our disability assessment system:
As readers of this site will know, I’ve been following the benefit assessment experiences of Sean (name changed), a 53-year-old man who has Asperger’s and severe depression and anxiety.
I’ve listed below some of the benefit assessments and reassessments – and associated DWP blunders and screwups, which is in many ways the real list – that Sean and his partner (who has a schizophrenia diagnosis) have experienced in recent times. They’re still in the middle of this non-stop assessment, of course. There literally is never a time when they’re not in the middle of one benefit assessment or another. They’re always filling in forms, waiting to be called to assessment, being called to assessment, going to assessment, waiting for assessment outcomes, appealing assessment outcomes, or being told to fill in a new set of forms.
But here’s the point I really want to make. There really isn’t any sort of service around that might change or improve their circumstances in any way. Quite the reverse. All of this couple’s support has been removed in the last few years. They had a social worker a few years ago, but lost that service because council funding was cut. The two used to attend a community mental health service (that’s where they met), but had to stop going there, because services were cut. They used a local welfare advice centre for some support with filling in application forms, but just received a letter saying that social security support at that service will end, because the housing association that funded part of it is pulling out. They are at the point where there is literally nobody around to help or to accompany them to face-to-face assessments. We get all this waffle from the DWP and government about getting people back to work and blah blah blah. At the same time, all familiar, useful and complex support is removed.
Still, the DWP assesses and assesses and assesses these people. I don’t know why the department expects things to have changed from one assessment to the next. A torrent of mail and paperwork pours through this couple’s door from the DWP and the council and their housing association. Some of the letters and processes don’t even make sense, as you’ll see below.
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 have been speaking with people who are homeless and who don’t have a fixed address.
They say that they can’t get or keep the benefits that they need.
The DWP says – of course – that things there is a system that homeless people can use to claim benefits and that the system works well.
I have doubts about that.
Last week, I spoke with three street homeless men in Manchester who all said – separately and adamantly – that they couldn’t and didn’t sign on for jobseekers’ allowance, because they didn’t have an address. I wasn’t actually looking to ask people about that in the first instance. The subject just kept coming up. I’ve been out in various parts of Manchester in the evenings talking with some of the people here who are street homeless. There are longer extracts from a couple of these interviews at the end of this article. We talked about housing benefit too, which obviously has address implications, but we were discussing JSA and ESA in this context:
“I’ve got nothing. I can’t claim benefits, because I’ve no address…You used to be able to sign on and they would give you so much money every day. Not any more. That’s all gone. Doesn’t exist anymore, that. Doesn’t exist.” Paul, 56, Deansgate, Thursday evening.
“You can’t claim dole, because you need a letterbox to get ID, but you need ID to get a letterbox…So all is as left is to beg, yeah…[I’ve been doing this for] five years…At the beginning, I had bags and bags of stuff. I had all me ID and that…[but] because you can’t look after it all the time, you stash it and other homeless people find it and… [shrugs].” Darren, 44, outside the Arndale Centre on Tuesday.
“I’m not going to get any benefits until you (sic) get an address.” Tom, 24, near Piccadilly station, Tuesday evening.
These conversations got me thinking. They got me thinking about exclusion, mainly – the ways in which people who really are on the rough end of things can be excluded from the income and support that might make a difference. I want to know more about the systems that the DWP and the government that is overseeing this mess have in place to make sure that people aren’t excluded from that support (yeah – I know. Don’t laugh). I get that people on the street can lead chaotic lives. I get that some people can have serious drug and alcohol problems, but so what. People with serious substance abuse problems should not be denied essentials such as housing and income. You adjust a system to meet needs, not the other way around. Readers of this site will know that the systems that people must use to claim benefits – benefits systems run by the DWP and jobcentres – can be extremely hard to navigate now and are in meltdown, even for claimants who do have an address. Readers of this site will also know that there is often a mile-wide gap between the way that the DWP says things work and the way that things actually work (if they work at all, that is).
So I rang the DWP. Needless to say, the DWP said that there was a functional system in place for prospective benefit claimants who don’t have an address. I rang the DWP’s New Claims line on Monday to ask (and spent 20 minutes on hold, just FYI. I’m keeping track of this aspect of service access). I spoke to an officer who insisted that there was a robust claims system in place for homeless people and that many used it. The officer seemed annoyed that I suggested otherwise. A Care Of address could be used, or a friend’s address (Why can’t he use your address if you’re a friend? this officer said to me at one point). The DWP said (when I asked) that people could use their local jobcentre as their Care Of address for DWP mail if they wanted (I wonder how many people want that). Continue reading
The story below is pretty extraordinary. It’s a classic example of the DWP’s extreme dysfunction and bureaucratic tangling. It also demonstrates how very few rights of appeal disabled people really have when they apply for benefits:
I’ve posted below a letter which was received last week by Sean (named changed), a man in his 50s who has an Asperger’s diagnosis and serious depression and anxiety. (I’ve been writing about Sean’s struggle to apply for Personal Independence Payment, the benefit that is meant to replace Disability Living Allowance).
About a month ago, Sean found out that his application for PIP had been turned down. Then, bizarrely, just a few days after he received that rejection letter, Sean got a letter from the DWP which said that his Mandatory Reconsideration of his PIP rejection decision had already been carried out and the decision to reject his PIP appeal upheld. Mandatory Reconsideration is the review that PIP applicants must ask for if they want to challenge a DWP decision about their PIP application. When people request a Mandatory Reconsideration, they can ask the DWP to review the reasons why they were turned down. The problem for Sean was that the DWP carried out a Mandatory Reconsideration of its decision to deny him PIP without telling or involving him. Sean didn’t request the Mandatory Reconsideration that the DWP did and he never had the chance to contribute to it. More than that – the letter Sean received about this random Mandatory Reconsideration showed that the DWP carried it out BEFORE it made a decision about Sean’s original PIP application. Sean didn’t request that Mandatory Reconsideration, because he didn’t even know his PIP application had been rejected when it was done. He was very upset about that, with good reason.
So – Sean wrote to the DWP to complain about this Mandatory Reconsideration going on without him. He asked the DWP to run his review again – and to this time give him a chance to contribute to it. He got this letter in return – a letter which says Sean’s Mandatory Reconsideration has already been done as far as the DWP is concerned and so that is the end of that:
The upshot is that Sean has been denied his right to tell the DWP why he believes he should get PIP. He also ended up with only two days to make an appeal against the PIP rejection to tribunal, because the DWP said he had to meet the appeal deadlines set out in the original random Mandatory Reconsideration letter.
It can be hard to keep up with all of this, you know. Kafkaesque really doesn’t begin to describe it. Makes you wonder how many sick or disabled people are denied benefits and their right to appeal if a decision goes against them. Let’s not forget either that Sean’s PIP application was turned down because he got extremely upset at his face-to-face assessment. His Asperger’s and anxiety mean that he finds coping with face-to-face assessments and meetings very difficult. No adjustments were made for that, though. The DWP’s decision to deny him PIP because of his Asperger’s and his struggle to cope in stressful situations such as benefit assessments with unsympathetic strangers was rotten in itself.
That situation is being followed up, believe me.
#RightsNotGames
Join Disabled People Against Cuts next week as they protest against cuts to disability rights and support. Details of events here.
I am confused. Any insight into the situation described in this post would be more than welcome:
Below, we have more evidence – as if we needed it – that the Personal Independence Payment application system is a complete bureaucratic shambles.
I’ve posted below a letter which was received last Friday by Sean (named changed), a man in his 50s who has an Asperger’s diagnosis and serious depression and anxiety. Sean applied for PIP earlier this year. He’s had a very difficult time of it. After an unpleasant face-to-face PIP assessment in April, his PIP application was turned down in July. I’ve been following Sean’s disastrous experience of the failed PIP application “system” for a while.
Now there comes a bizarre twist. Last week – just a week after Sean received his PIP rejection letter – Sean received a letter from the DWP which said that as a result of a request made by Sean, the DWP had reviewed its decision not to award Sean PIP (and found against him again). People who want to challenge a PIP decision must ask the DWP to go through a process of reviewing an original award decision before the PIP applicant can appeal that decision at a tribunal. This extra review step is called Mandatory Reconsideration. If people want this review, they can contact the DWP explaining why they think the original decision was wrong. I’m guessing the letter Sean received is a Mandatory Reconsideration decision letter (about a mandatory reconsideration he hadn’t requested yet), but am not sure. I get very confused about all of this myself. Feel free to share views on the letter.
The problem is that Sean never actually asked the DWP to carry out this review. He has yet to ask for a review of any kind (even though the letter says he asked for this one). He certainly didn’t ask the DWP to review a PIP decision that was made in May, as the letter says. That’s because in May, Sean still had no idea whether he’d been awarded PIP or not. He’d only just had his face-to-face assessment. The decision about his application had not been made. He only received a letter informing him of the outcome of his application towards the end of July. Still, he got this letter. It says the review of Sean’s PIP rejection is done and dusted, and that the answer to Sean’s request for PIP is still No:
You can imagine how Sean felt when this letter turned up. He’d only just found out that his application for PIP had been denied. Then he got this letter which made him think that the review step – his chance to explain in detail why he should be awarded PIP – had gone ahead without him. He was very upset when he rang me to talk about it last Friday. It’s no wonder that this process drives people to the brink. Continue reading
This is a story about Capita’s abject failure to adjust its PIP assessment procedures for people who need adjustments.
Here’s a Personal Independence Payment decision letter received last week by Sean (named changed), a man in his 50s who has Asperger’s and severe depression and anxiety:
You’ll see the letter says that Sean – a long-term Disability Living Allowance recipient – has been denied PIP altogether. He has been denied PIP, because, the letter says, Sean “failed to comply at the assessment centre,” (Sean was assessed for PIP at a Capita assessment centre in earlier this year). That would appear to be that.
Except that it is not. I think this is a significant decision. It is significant because it suggests that Sean’s PIP assessors made no allowances or adjustments for Sean’s mental health and problems dealing with stress at his assessment. Sean says that he got angry and upset at his PIP assessment and that the assessor cut the meeting short, because Sean was clearly not able to cope. Now, Sean has been told that the official interpretation of this event is that he failed to comply at his PIP assessment. He won’t get PIP as a result.
This makes me wonder. It certainly makes me wonder how things pan out for other PIP applicants who have complex spectrum diagnoses and mental health conditions, and who exhibit so-called challenging behaviour in stressful situations such as PIP assessments. Is it One Strike And You’re Out for everybody? Does Capita actually have processes in place to make sure that people who clearly struggle with assessments have other assessment options? Sean says that the Capita assessor suggested a home assessment when his face-to-face meeting was ended – but the home assessment never happened. It turned out that Sean and his GP were responsible for organising a home meeting themselves. (I rang the DWP to try and get to the bottom of all of this and the officer I spoke to said that was how the “system” worked). Sean didn’t realise this. The upshot was that a home visit never took place. Continue reading
This one goes out to our new work and pensions secretary Damian Green. What will he do about the destruction of disability support in jobcentres? Hope the answer isn’t Nothing, or Get Lost, Kate.
Throwing this out there as a conversation starter:
I post below a video extract from a meeting at northwest London jobcentre earlier this year.
In the video and the meeting, the jobcentre adviser freely conceded that services for benefit claimants with extra support needs had been wrecked by cuts. More than that: the adviser conceded to me and Linda*, a 51-year-old sick and disabled JSA claimant whose JSA claim had been closed and housing benefit suspended, that “the most vulnerable” claimants who “can’t cope with the complexity of the [benefits] system,” were at extra risk of sanctions, claim closures, housing benefit shutdowns and other bureaucratic screwups because the service had been wrecked by cuts. They were at extra risk because the DWP had radically reduced the number of specialist disability employment advisers in jobcentres. Disability employment advisers were jobcentre advisers who had the time and training to support sick or disabled benefit claimants. They weren’t all great, but some were better than nothing. On occasion, they acted as a buffer between disabled claimants and sanctions. Some would argue in defense of a sick or disabled claimant who missed a meeting, or they’d make sure not to sanction a claimant who couldn’t use a computer and meet online jobsearch requirements.
In various press statements over months, the DWP tried to tell me that DEAs had been replaced by work coaches who offered a tailored service. In reality, jobcentres advisers were telling me and sick or disabled claimants such as Linda that DEAs had been replaced with nothing:
(Video transcript at the end of this post)
You’ll understand why I’m very keen to hear about the sort of plans that our new secretary of state for work and pensions has to address this particular disaster area. I’m not keen on receiving more press releases, or empty statements from the DWP about so-called tailored support for sick or disabled people. I asked the DWP last week about the number of DEAs in jobcentres/how things were coming along, etc. They chucked me a link from an early-June Hansard debate in which already-forgotten DWP head and baton-dropper Stephen Crabb rattled on about plans to double the number of DEAs in jobcentres. If I am honest, this doubling didn’t seem a great result to me, given that the number of DEAs had been cut by more than half in the first place. God knows, too, if any action on the doubling front has or will actually be taken. It is my experience that commitments made by ministers and the DWP don’t always exactly match the reality of the everyday journey on the ground. Let’s add that to the list of issues to explore. I’m keen for Mr Green to open jobcentre doors at all times to journalists, claimant representatives and anybody else who wants to forensically examine the facts of the DWP’s support for sick or disabled benefit claimants.