"failed" PIP appointment, help

rina123

Hello, I was supposed to be having my assessment today but it ended up not going ahead because of some weird rules.

For context, I have been trying to get PIP for years, but always declined, I decided to try again since getting my EDS and Autism diagnoses as those took a long time.
One of the things I struggle with, is phone calls, they are one of the few situations that will trigger situational muteism in me, this has been mentioned both in my form and multtiple times as we had my mum be my apointee and advocate as I am unable to speak when a phone is involved, they came over and assessed me for needing an appointee and they deemed me needing one to speak for me and also to bypass any security questions.

today my mum answered the phone and they refused to do the assessment until I spoke to them to confirm my DOB and that I was happy for her to do it.
as you can imagine, there was a problem with that, I couldn't speak.

They are now saying it needs to go to higher ups to see if there's anything that can be done but they want to count my being unable to speak as a 2nd strike to my application

I'm extremely stressed by this, it feels very upsetting to worked so hard on such a demeaning task of the PIP form to be told they wont even do the assessment because of my disability

they mentioned a paper review? but they worded it like they would only look at the section to do with my communicating? I feel a bit apprehensive to agree to one because it feels like theyre just not gonna read everything

what can be done please help

OverlyAnxious

Hi,

This is frustrating to hear. It's something I come up against all the time as well. Fortunately for me I was still able to speak a bit back when I started PIP, and did manage to do a verbal assessment…for which I scored 0 points! Then had a paper based tribunal where I scored 14 points…for paper based isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've also since had a paper based review where I also gained additional points due to worsening conditions.

I can't speak at all now, and have been this way for around 4 or 5 years. It is incredibly frustrating to jump through so many hoops with all sorts of services and companies and end up unable to complete something just because I/we can't speak. I don't understand how that isn't discrimination, but I also do understand that fraudsters would absolutely take advantage of any loophole that allowed non-verbal comms to be an easy process, so it is a very difficult situation and I'm not sure what the answer is.

To answer your question, a paper based PIP assessment does look at every question, not just the communication question. But obviously it's much easier for them to twist words and score 0 points if you have no direct input during the assessment.