PIP mental health appeal Bi-polar

Candy wrote: Hi all.
I am about write my appeal letter to go to tribunal. I have bipolar amongst other health conditions. On my face to face assessors report and the accessors report the hp said there was no evidence of cognitive impairment and doesn't appear to be withdrawn or anxious under every discriptor which I am struggling to dispute against for the appeal. Any help would be greatly recieved.

You say you are writing an appeal letter, can you clarify?

To request an appeal you need to complete an SSCS1 from, whilst you need to provide reasons for the appeal, you do not have to go into detail.

Are you referring to your submission for the hearing?

To win an appeal you need to show that your meet the criteria to score the points needed, so this must be your first priority. A good place to start is your claim form, the assessment report and our PIP Claim guide, for each activity you expected to score against, check that you have met the criteria, lots of the Descriptors have multiple elements and you must meet all to score.

Also, make sure that you have made appropriate use of the reliability criteria and on the majority of days.

Secondly deal with the issues in the assessment report, try and stick to issues of fact, arguing with the assessors opinions is rarely successful, also ask yourself the question for each issue in it, how does this help me score points?

Gordon

Candy wrote: Hi I was given the standard rate care and no mobility. In every discriptor the assessor wrote that I had no cognitive impairment and I didn't appear to be withdrawn when It came to the other discriptors like managing my medication and cooking ect

Whilst I am not saying that you should not respond to the content of the assessment report, you will only win your appeal by showing that you meet the criteria, so the first thing you should do is to go back to your original claim form to make sure that you have shown this. Some of the Descriptors for the activities have multiple elements and you need to show that you meet all of them to score the points.

Also, have you made appropriate use of the reliability and criteria and on the majority of days?

If you do want to deal with the report then try and stick to correcting facts, if you want to challenge an opinion then you should only do so if you can clearly show it as being in error, you don't want to get into trading opinions.

All I can recommend, if you are saying you have cognitive issues, is to document examples of how you are effected for each relevant activity.

Gordon

Candy wrote: Hi I have a mental impairment not cognitive impairment. The assessor did not acknowledge my mental impairment whatsoever, I didn't know whether to include this in my appeal form or just ignore it, like you say I want to stick with facts if you can understand what I'm saying.

You don't need to go into detail on your appeal request form, there's an example form in the Submissions PDF in the PIP area.

Do you have evidence of cognitive problems, if you do then maybe mention this on the form, if not then maybe stay clear of it for the moment and include it in your submission.

Gordon