PIP Assessment Advice

Hi Nina

Your niece won't be asked to do any 'tasks' at the assessment. The only physical things that claimants are sometimes asked to do - is to show things like the strength of the grip - but as this would not be relevant to your niece and her condition does not affect her mobility she is not likely to be asked to do anything.

The questions that they ask are very similar for everyone, they are not based on people's conditions. There may be one or two that are condition-specific, but that will depend on the assessor.

We don't have any examples of people only claiming for a skin condition it generally is along with other co-existing conditions.

BIS

Hi Nina

I'm not an assessor, nor do I know your niece. It's impossible for us to say whether a person will or will not fulfill particular criteria.

You said there is an issue of she comes into contact with certain raw food. The law explicitly talks about the ability to be able to prepare fresh ingredients, so if this is not possible or if she suffers any sort of reaction, you should detail it. Obviously you should cover the issue of gloves - because if you don't they will. It's important to cover how safe she is, and what happens if she does come into contact with raw food.


Legal definitions
Remember, words like ‘unaided’, ‘prompting’, ‘supervision’ and ‘assistance’ appear in many activities and have strict legal definitions: see General definitions you need to know. In this activity the following words and phrases also have strict legal definitions, as shown below in italics:

“Prepare”, in the context of food, means make food ready for cooking or eating.

This obviously includes things like washing, peeling and chopping and can also include things like opening tins and packets and weighing and measuring ingredients.

“Cook” means heat food at or above waist height.

“Simple meal” means a cooked one-course meal for one using fresh ingredients.

The law talks about 'using fresh ingredients'. So, if all you can manage is to heat ready-meals in a microwave oven, you should score points. Even if you microwave your food, you will still score points if you cannot cut up and prepare fresh meat and vegetables before cooking them in the microwave.


BIS