Advice on what evidence to send?

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EllieStar1989

I Am appealing my pip 
waiting to go to court 
i recently joined a new doctors surgery And joined there online patient thing And I noticed it says all mt medical records right back to the age of 3 it's all listed all mu mental health problems behaviour problems all my physical problems and no all my hospital visits also mentions the help I need the possible stroke I had and I wonder can I send this all in for evidence 
i also worry it will be used against me because there are things wrote in like to say I took my nephew out to nursery he is a year old my sister got him dressed got him in the buggy And I walked for
about 5 minutes and sat on a chair while he played and the woman running the nursery was also watching him I felt anxious and didn't speak to anyone's while there I was claiming for mental health and a few physical but not mobility but I know how everything is used against us 

CockneyRebel

Hi EllieStar

Tribunals are only interested in How your conditions affect your functionality

Have you had the bundle from the DWP ?
Have you entered your own submission ?

Recently posted by esteemed member regarding evidence

good quality evidence” not “good quality medical evidence”. If your diagnosis is not in doubt then nor will the symptoms be. However, two people with the same medical conditions and same symptoms will both be affected in different ways for many reasons. PIP want to know whether you can perform specific activities reliably, safely, repeatedly and to a reasonable standard. If you can’t then do you need aids/appliances, prompting or assistance? PIP, like DLA, doesn’t require a diagnosis. It just requires real symptoms. if that’s not in doubt then what they need, and what claimants consistently fail to focus on, is the precise impact of those symptoms. Please don’t come back and say that should be obvious. It really isn’t. Everyone is different. You can have people who push through pain and people who psychologically would never be capable of that. You can have people who rate their pain as a 5 but can’t lift a pan and people who rate their pain an 8 who can. Good luck finding a consultant or GP with first hand knowledge of your ability to lift pans! If you don’t tell them then they don’t know.

Does your GP have meals with you? Does your GP bathe you? Does your GP go to the toilet with you? Does your GP sleep over and know what you’re like overnight? If they don’t, and I’m guessing they don’t, then they have no useful evidence to offer on the very things PIP wants to know. 

The best evidence on the things PIP need to know is your own anecdotal evidence. Why specifically can’t you prepare food? What happened the last time you tried? When was that? Who witnessed it? Where did you have to go when you burnt yourself? Why isn’t it in your medical records? Those boxes for any “extra information”! That’s where the anecdotal stuff goes and if you don’t fill then with up to date anecdotal information then you’re instantly operating with one arm behind your back. Norton2018 said:

I symptoms vary, like all conditions, from person to person so it always comes back to the anecdotal stuff.

People complain repeatedly on here that HCPs and tribunals ask irrelevant questions. They absolutely don’t. They are wholly focused on the functional consequences of your symptoms and pulling anecdotal evidence out of people who think some letters from people with letters after their name should always be enough. 

52% of DLA/PIP claims succeed without any medical evidence whatsoever. There’s no evidence, literally none, that the other 48% of successful claims succeed because of any medical evidence submitted. 

i would say there’s lots of merit in focused medical evidence for mental ill health but otherwise you need to ask yourself specifically what gap will be filled by GP or other medical evidence. If you can’t identify a specific gap...

Incidentally, whether we like it or not, the onus is on the claimant to evidence their entitlement at the claim stage. There’s no onus on DWP to gain evidebvr in your behalf in most circumstances.

We all know the HCP process is flawed. The mistake people make repeatedly is to think that they individually can fix that. “Maybe if I take my consultants letters on the day?” “Maybe if I take someone who knows me?” “Maybe if I record the assessment?” Any or all of those things may assist in giving less weight to the outcome of a HCP assessment but they almost never change the outcome of the assessment itself at the assessment stage.

 Similarly, only 16% of decisions are being changed at the MR stage so again the problem is not necessarily your evidence but the poor process for assessing it. Once a claim fails people blame themselves and think “More evidence. That’ll change their mind.” Of course there are some circumstances where that is true but just as often the process is the issue and most people say in one breath that they understand anecdotal evidence is important but continue to mentally think that everything will change if their GP or consultant or whoever just says x. So, if you’re correct and you already have a load of anecdotal evidence then stick with that at the appeal stage. The CA stuff you’re quoting is generic information. It’s a vague general principle type of thing. Not universally applicable.

I’ve already explained why GP evidence is largely irrelevant unless diagnosis or symptoms are in dispute so I won’t repeat that but it’s also worth knowing that most claimants have no means of assessing the worth of such evidence and often submit evidence from a GP which actually harms their case. WROs used to request such evidence; assess it if it ever came and not submit it if it was detrimental. Nowadays you can’t do that. Tribunals want everything on record.

So if I wrote to a GP then my letter and the response have to go into the appeal papers whether or not the response is helpful. If you get GP or other medical evidence and you get advice that it’s not helpful you actually have a big big problem if you then withhold that and the tribunal request your medical records and then come across that letter. Your evidence will be instantly less credible.

So, to take your specific point, an approach that something is better than nothing and must be “surely helpful” is dangerous. Focus in on the gaps in your anecdotal evidence. What specifically can a GP add re: specific activities? If they can’t then leave well alone and trust your evidence and the tribunal. If you’re not sure then you need face to face advice and in any event you’d be well advised to get representation.