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Annabelle26

I apologise for not coming on here for a while but I have been ill. I collapsed physically & mentally after receiving my 2nd ESA payment.  Seeing it seemed to give me an Anxiety Attack which seemed to go on to cause other problems but I am now feeling a lot better.  The payments are flowing in ok.

I have now received my first PIP payment plus backdated arrears   Unfortunately most of the money went paying off arrears & I have put some away for bills due in the near future as I had to use the money I had saved to make ends meet when the DWP stopped both my benefits leaving me with hardly any income.  

As I felt I had lost the mobility component of PIP because I started to panic & lost the thread & did not answer the question properly I wrote to the Tribunal a few days later asking them to review the case.  As I had not heard anything, not even an acknowledgement I rang them up.  The person I spoke to told me they had received my letter & that & the file have gone back to the Panel for review but she could not give me a date when it would be looked at again.

I also had a strange letter from the DWP.  For them it was quite a simple form asking questions about Carers Allowance.  It was a short form with just yes/no answers with more information required if yes.  All my answers were no & I posted it back to them.

Best of luck to people facing medicals & tribunals etc & hope everything goes well.

Pippa_Alumni

Welcome back @Annabelle26, and thanks for updating us!

I'm truly sorry to hear about the impact the process had on you, it must have been really tough to deal with. Really glad to hear that things have somewhat been resolved now!

debbiedo49

Welcome back. I don’t know what happenned about your esa but I virtually gave up a couple of years ago after riding the esa merry go round and lost at tribunal. It was at a very bad time of the year for me and my mental health suffered. Luckily I had my son around to keep me going. I wasn’t getting much support then and I just felt devestated, but you just have to dig deep and carry on don’t you? Later on I started getting help with this stuff from a mental health charity and this year I started getting pip too. It makes all the difference financially and mentally as I feel I am not a fake. It’s only a short award but thanks to Scope I hope I will have the strength to carry on with the process. Best wishes Debbie