ATOS Phone Interview

Hi, this is my first post on here - please be gentle

My daughter turned 16 earlier this year, has been receiving DLA since she was 3. She has Cerebral Palsy (right-side hemiplegia), epilepsy and severe learning difficulties.

I completed the PIP form (thanks B&W for the amazing guides!) and received a call this morning from ATOS, who proceeded to effectively give me an on the phone interview regarding various aspects of the form - walking distance, more information about her hemiplegia, her ability to use money, travel, etc.

She thanked me for the information, was going to gather more from other people I'd listed and complete her medical report today and send it to the DWP. She said the DWP would be in touch within 4-6 weeks.

I've never heard this being mentioned before as a stage in the process and wondered if this was a common occurrence.

When exactly does the medical assessment (that we attend) occur?

I have read that there are some people who they consider don't need to attend an interview, I wondered if this was an indication that we were one of those, or if this is just a preliminary stage in the process.

Hi and Welcome to the forum, you might want to have a look at the following FAQ which explain where everything is

Welcome to Benefits and Work

In case you are not aware, your real name appears to be showing in the forum, if you want to change this then follow the instructions in the following FAQ

My full name is showing, how can I stop it?

---

It is not common for the assessor to phone the claimant for further information. It sounds as if she wanted clarification of a few things and now feels she has enough information to make a recommendation to DWP without your daughter needing to attend a face2face interview.

The process is getting slower and slower as the year progresses, at the moment it is taking around 8 weeks for DWP to make a decision once the assessor has returned the file to them.

You might want to bookmark/favourite this on your web browser now so that you can find it easily in future. This will allow you to return with further questions/comments about your daughter's PIP claim without having to start a new topic each time. It helps us enormously when everything relating to the same claim is kept in one place - and I hope you will find it useful too

Thanks for the reply. Have changed profile (that was difficult to find) to show my username.

Hi, I'm back again - have had decision from DWP regarding my daughter and I'm so pleased to say she received Enhanced Rate for both the Daily Living and Mobility elements!

The letter states that this will be for an "ongoing period" and the end of the letter from the assessor states "as your condition is unlikely to change I have selected the maximum possible review period".

I'm so happy and would like to thank Benefits and Work for the fantastic advice and the manuals that help complete the forums so fully. Worth every penny and I know that I wouldn't have been able to do it without access to these.

Good luck to all still going through this extremely stressful process and to those waiting results.

That's great news Muggsy! Thanks for letting us know and for your kind words about B+W