PIP Home Visit - Physical Assessment

Hi everyone,

I’m in the process of being transferred from DLA to PIP. I have a home visit PIP assessment soon (after fighting to be assessed at home) which I’m obviously terrified about . I have chronic pain and depression/anxiety too.

I’ve read you can decline to do anything that causes you pain in the assessment. Well EVERYTHING causes me pain, even being touched or small movements of my joints. So do I have the right to refuse the physical assessment on grounds of pain or will this count against me? Will they force me to walk? Moving anything is agony and that’s been made clear in my form, but I’m scared this will be seen as me not cooperating.

Also I’m rarely able to leave my bedroom which is upstairs (only leave to go toilet downstairs as little as possible and it’s like climbing Everest for me), so the assessment will probably have to take place in my bedroom. Will the fact that it’s upstairs count against me ie it demonstrates that I have to climb stairs at some point during the day to get up and down even though it's agony.

I’m going round and round in circles worrying of ways they could try to trick me and my anxiety is through the roof.

Thanks for any help D x

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

Welcome to Benefits and Work

You certainly don't have to do anything that would cause pain or harm. As you rightly say, you need to make it very clear that your refusal is only because of this. This will be more evident if your general manner is open and accommodating.

It is entirely up to you where the assessment is carried out. The assessor might mention the issue of the bathroom being downstairs and you should give some thought to how you are going to address this.

Our PIP guide explains what to expect on the day, it will not be very different from one carried out in an assessment centre.

One word of warning - the assessor could arrive on time, early, late - or not at all.

You might like 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 or comments about your PIP 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