Pip Assesment

Renegadeshania wrote: Hi All

I have my atos appointment on wednesday and are a bit worried i suffer from anxiety , depression and are affraid to go out on my own . I have to have my patner with me at all times if we go out, also in stressfull situations like wrag interviews or dwp meetings i'm unable to speak with people i dont know... I try to speak but nothing comes out at all and my partner has to speak for me or i have to write it down. I have had the speech therapist out to me and she has diagnosed me with speech dysfluency and said i have blocking which she thinks was caused by a stressful incident in my past.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
thanks

Prepare a note for the assessor explaining your problems, that way if you are affected as soon as you walk in you can hand them the note to explain.

The PIP Claim guide has a list of the questions you are likely to be asked so you could go through these with your partner so that they have a good understanding of how you might reply if they need to clarify anything during the assessment.

Good luck

Gordon

Renegadeshania

I'm sorry to hear that your claim was unsuccessful.

You have two options going forward;

- you can make a new claim for PIP and/or
- you can challenge the Decision

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you to request a Mandatory Reconsideration, this needs to be done in writing to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim, have a look at our PIP MR & Appeal guide for details of the process and template letters that you can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip

You should contact the DWP for a copy of the assessment report if you have not already done so, I would phone them but again follow up the request in writing. Once you have the assessment report you will have a better understanding of how the DWP Decision Maker has come to their conclusions and will then be able to argue against them.

Your primary task is to show that you meet the criteria, there are many reasons you may have failed, you need to address each of these but don't get bogged down in criticising the assessment report unless you can clearly show that it is incorrect, it is a lot easier to argue the facts of the situation;

"the assessor recorded that I walked 50m, I did but they have failed to document that I had to stop every 10m for a rest due to breathlessness"

than their opinions

"based on my observations of the claimant walking I believe that they can reliably walk more than 200m.

When you have a better idea of the issues with your claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

Gordon