Help! Atos Friday. Asperger's , Dyslexia, ME/CFS .

D@H wrote: Hello.
I think this is my first ever time on a forum.
I have come to the site a few times but because of my impairments I guess, not been sure where to look. So maybe the forum will help.

I have an Atos assesment on Friday (they have not responded to attempt to get a home visit).
Support person who will attend won my tribunal for DLA a couple of years ago but wants to know what we'll be asked and what to argue....

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The ESA assessment is a fact finding exercise by ATOS on behalf of the DWP, there is no opportunity to "argue" your case, in fact doing so can cause problems as the assessor may choose to believe that you or your companion are being deliberately obstructive and terminate the interview, so you should be very careful in doing this.

The following has links to the questions you are likely to be asked

ESA Medical – What to expect

If you have any more questions, please reply to this post.

Gordon

D@H

Yes you can view the guides online, if you follow the links it will take you into the members area where all of the guides are listed, when you click on a guide it gives you the option to either "open" it for online viewing or to "download" it to your PC for viewing or printing there. In either case you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC, if you do not then just do an internet search for this phrase and you should be able to download and install it.

The guides are regularly updated, so if it is some time since you downloaded the guides you might want to check that you have the current versions.

The ESA assessment is very different from the DLA one, whilst the latter is more of a conversation, albeit following a script dictated by the form the assessor fills in, the ESA interview is much more of an interrogation and is controlled by a computer programme that requires specific answers.

Further, you are very unlikely to be asked any direct questions in regard to your health problems and any limitations that they cause, the computer system derives your limitations through inference and assumption from your answers to what may seem quite innocuous questions.

As an example; "do you watch TV?", if you answer yes without further qualification, the assessor will assume that you can sit for long periods of time without pain, that you do not suffer from poor concentration, that you do not have problems with your sight and probably your hearing as well!

Gordon