Transferring From Dla To Pip

[iloveglee]

Does anyone on here know if there is anyone who would come to the house to help with the completion of the PIP application form. A friend of mine has asked me to help her fill in her son's PIP form. He has fragile X, so has severe learning disability. He does have many capabilities, but I believe he only has these because he is living with his Mother, I believe he would struggle alone. As I don't live with him, it's not especially easy for me to properly determine what his capabilities actually are. Some of them are easy to determine, others are less so.

I am therefore struggling with this form myself, it's enormous and the amount of information required is vast. I don't want to minimise his condition because he does have severe learning disabilities, but at the same time don't want to make him seem worse than he is either. My friend is 83, has had a stroke a few years ago which left her with her eyesight affected, so she simply is not able to do this herself. She has no-one else.

I know that you can get help with benefit claims as my parents had someone come around years ago and helped them get benefits they didn't even know they were entitled to. I have no idea though how this all came about, or where this woman came from.

I have tried, with no success to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau. My friend is quite bad on her legs so would not be able to get there herself. I feel quite bad for them, he has been receiving DLA ever since becoming an adult, and his condition is lifelong and is abilities will never improve. Getting evidence from health professionals is a nightmare, he is physically very fit, hardly ever goes to the GP and does not have any other support.

Any help or advice that anyone can offer would be very welcome. If you have gone through this process all the better. I thought you could do this online but apparently not. You have to physically write all this down on an enormous form.

I have looked on the Fragile X websites, some of which are not relevant as they are American. They do have quite a comprehensive document with advice, but I am a great believer in asking people, of their own experiences which can help inform mine. Thanks in advance.

[iloveglee]

I don't know exactly what he is on now, apart from it's DLA. Apparently he went on to this, or whatever it was called then at the age of 18, he's 50 now.

Mencap did the whole thing, he had quite a bit of involvement with them in the past. They got him a job at Remploy which sadly doesn't exist now. Then when that folded they got him a job somewhere else but that closed down too. He has worked at Asda in the cafe for the last 25 years. It's only 10 minutes walk from where he lives so he doesn't have to manage bus journeys - which he can't do alone.

The letter to tell him he was transferring to PIP came a few weeks ago, and his Mum had to phone them to start the process off. The form came a few days ago and she took one look at it and thought there was no way she could manage it without some help. Hence she asked me, I am the go to person for form filling in!!

To be fair, I used to be a health professional so was very used to filling in forms. Fortunately for me I have retained the skill.

[iloveglee]

I am here again asking questions. Calling the so called PIP helpline is like drawing teeth. There seems to be no facility to ask a general question, it has to relate to the person making the claim, and they won't speak to me as the person making the claim is not here with me.

I may have to grit my teeth at some stage and do it, but wonder if there is anyone on here who has made a recent claim and can help. I have looked on the appropriate website and find that the claim cannot be made online. There is a great deal of information that has to be put on the form about this particular claimee and writing it out by hand is frankly a chore.

Does anyone know if the additional information sheets can be typed and attached to the form? This would be so very much more helpful but I don't want to assume its possible, do it, and then find they decline the claim on that basis. I know that the company who manage the claim process have targets for refusing claims (i have this on very good authority), so don't want to give them an easy way out of accepting it.

[THECORBYLOON]

Question 15 asks for additional information. I would just write "Please see attached" and attach the typed response.

With regards to the company making the decisions, they don't. An independent Healthcare Professional (HCP) carries out the assessment. That assessment, evidence from the claimant and any other medical evidence is then considered by a DWP Decision Maker who decides if the entitlement conditions are satisfied or no.

[ladybirder]

What a good friend you are ilg. Reading all you have said on this thread, I am perplexed how anyone ever manages to fool the decision makers into paying thousand of pounds only to someone who is eventually caught playing football having sworn they couldn't walk more than 2 metres. I thought corroberation from a claimant's doctor was needed.

[THECORBYLOON]

LB this gives background to the assessment. I see that a Healthcare Professional (HCP) is now a Health Professional (HP) and the Decision Maker is the Case Manager (CM) but the CM works for DWP still.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/personal-independence-payment-assessment-guide-for-assessment-providers/pip-assessment-guide-part-1-the-assessment-process#completing-assessment-reports

[iloveglee]

For some disabilities most certainly there would need to be reports from the GP, maybe hospital consultants also. With this condition, the person is usually physically very fit, and pretty long lived actually. He never goes to the GP except once for a chest infection and once for a bad back!! I am pretty sure though they would apply to the GP to make sure they aren't lying about the fact that he does have this condition. They would be reluctant to ask the GP for a report because there would be very little he could put in it and would probably charge £20+ for it.

The whole thing is fairly ridiculous actually. People with this condition cannot normally read, write, manage money or work out how to get from a to b by themselves. They most certainly cannot fill out a form of this kind. And the fact that he has been determined as disabled already, and the condition he has does not change, what he could not do at 18, he cannot do now, and will not be able to do should he live to be 90.

There is a very distinct difference between physical disability where the person is in possession of their mental faculties, and a condition like this where there is severe learning disability and issues with communication and interaction with others.

We have had to stress this very firmly on the form, the words are his Mother's words, based on her knowledge of him as her son. He simply could not put the words together even verbally.

They have not had this to do before, other than when he was 18, Mencap were involved and my friend was a good deal more capable then than she is now.

However, progress is being made. The fragileX.org document was very useful in leading us as to what to think about when filling in this form. One of the major issues is that he doesn't ever have to do things that he can't do, because he never has to, so on the face of it, doesn't seem too bad, at a very basic level. Dig deeper though, and get to know him and the disability becomes very apparent. We can see depths because we know him that others can't. I have tried to stress this to her, this is about how he would appear to an assessor who doesn't know him.

The things he can do, physical things like cleaning, looking after himself with bathing, dressing etc. he is very good at and needs no help, although you could argue that he can only do this because the materials to do it are provided by someone else. It all sounds quite nit picking but they recommend mentioning this.

For me, as the person tasked with this, although voluntarily, I'm not under any kind of pressure, it's nice to know there are people out there who are willing to answer questions and provide links which might help.

[ladybirder]

Thanks for the link CBL - what a bureaucratic nightmare, makes me feel ill just looking at it.
Glee, having read the 2nd para in your 13.10 post it does seem ridiculous that they are asking for proof again.

[iloveglee]

I know, the whole thing is crazy. But we are where we are. I think i now have all the necessary information for us to do this form. I am however, at a bit of a loss as to how to actually phrase the answers.

The letter is address to my friend, as acting on her son's behalf but state that the information in this letter is about him. Obviously. But i can't work out if it's better to phrase it in the first person, as if it was him doing the form which it clearly isn't. Or to start all the statement with 'he' which then means my friend is saying it about him. Which she clearly is as he isn't able to verbalise or really understand any of this!! I've never filled in a form before on behalf of someone who has a learning disability. I've done them for people who aren't able to write but have just written what they have dictated to me.

I am concerned because having just spoken to my sister, who had to help her foster son do this, and subsequently accompanied him to the face to face assessment because he couldn't go alone. He has mental health problems. When the benefit was refused, one of the reasons was because he had made his own way to the assessment, which he hadn't, and they knew he hadn't. So it seems that they lied. He has a social worker now, so she is dealing with it.

I am still trying to get my friend to get some services on board but she is still very resistant. She is an exceptionally independent person but sometimes you really have to admit you need help from someone professional.

[Stargazer]

My daughter worked for Equal Lives and they made an appointment at a convenient local centre where my younger daughter who has major but intermittent difficulties was helped enormously and the form was completed on her behalf as they have the means of seeing how many points you need to qualify for what was her DLA.