Hi! I just wanted to share my experience re. the telephone assessment for a new claim which I had this morning.
Although I don't know the outcome I just wanted to share how it was for anyone who is nervous to undertake their own calls! Please note that different assessors may be different, this is just how mine went personally.
So firstly I found out about my appointment 7 days in advance via text and they also called me the working day before to remind me about it and let me know my assessors name.
She called me 10 minutes late, but nothing that dramatic and it felt quite relaxed. It was VERY clear she had read through my documents (and I had sent relatively a lot!). It was also super great as she was an experienced eating disorder practitioner and I have an ED diagnosis/issues. She was very understanding and, luckily for me, well informed with the nature of my mental health issues.
During the call I was expecting, as I heard from the forums, 'trick' questions or repetitive ones. And I didn't really feel like that happened. Instead we went through the pip criteria one by one and she only wanted to focus on answering each specific section one at a time. And once she'd gone over it once then it wasn't revisited.
After I answered questions she read out what she was typing, as long as that wasn't a 'trick', I got a clear impression of what was going into the report. (I guess we will see about that when I find out!)
Overall my call lasted about an hour.
Questions that were asked:
- About me, my medication, my employment history and when I last worked, my schooling
- She then addressed my three diagnosis and we talk about that for a bit, my treatments and how it touches on my life.
- We then went into every section of the pip criteria one by one individually and she asked me about them in regards to each illness separately then as a whole. Occasionally she'd use a situational example like "if you were left in the middle of town would you be able to get home" to help me answer but there weren't that many of those.
And that was it really! Happy to answer any questions x
