PIP Assessment

Hello

After four assessment cancellations (they cancelled on me on the morning of each assessment) over the last eight weeks I finally had a telephone assessment yesterday.

I asked for it to be recorded but no email recording came through. Let me explain the issue as I see it. First let me state I am not a racist so please do not read anything racially negative into my comments.

The assessor spoke with what sounded like a Nigerian accent and also rolled his words into a mumble. He didn’t introduce himself or give his profession. It took the first 15 mins of the assessment to get my email noted down. For example I would say chrissy……. and he would write down christine…. and I’d say no, it’s chrissy and I would spell it out and he kept saying it’s not accepting your email address. So I gave him an alternative email and he blundered his way through that. As no email came I can only assume there is a spelling mistake.

Moving onto the assessment itself, I couldn’t understand half of what he was saying and I had to keep asking him to repeat himself. To avoid any awkwardness I kept saying the telephone line broke up a bit.

When I would give him an answer to a question he would repeat the answers as he typed but the answer would be wrong so I’d have stop him and correct him to which he’d reply OK got that. This happened several times. For example, I have severe issues with the left side of my body. So I would say “my left arm……” and I’d hear him type and speak, “the right arm….” so I’d have to correct him. But I could always understand his mumbling whilst typing so he could have been writing anything!

To be honest it appeared he could no more understand me than I could understand him. From my perspective I don’t have an accent, my speaking voice is almost Received Pronunciation so usually I’m not hard to understand.

I feel the whole assessment went badly as I’d really not much of a clue what he was asking me and I don’t think he knew much of what I was telling him in reply. I could quite easily have been giving answers that contradicted my written statements.

By the end the assessment I was in tears and felt quite poorly. It went on for 1 hour 50 minutes. I was physically sick at the conclusion as it had been so fraught.

Sorry to vent. Has anyone else faced a similar issue and been awarded as they felt they should be?

Got to say that we too have experienced 'language barrier' issues on both my daughters and husbands assessments - again, as the OP, both Nigerian accents, this is in no way racist but I too spent the whole of my daughters assessment asking the nurse to repeat herself - and as the OP, I also stated that we had bad reception to guard against any presumption that we may be racist - this should not be happening!