Hi, my name is Diablo76! I've received the assesors report. Is it worth considering a MR

Diablo76

Hi all, i recently applied for PIp as i have lost 70% of my hearing. Today i received the assesors report. It gave me 11 for care and 10 for the mobility part, i have not received the main letter from dwp as yet. Is it worth considering a MR or would they add the points on two of the things the accessors says contradicts what she said in the sentence before. One on care and one on me organising a journey. 

poppy123456

The report is not the decision. It's a recommendation. Although they mostly go with the report they have been known to go against it. Once the decision is made if you're not happy you can request the MR within 1 month of the date of the decision.

Whether it's possible to score more points for a higher award will depend on exactly how your conditions affect you. As i have no idea of this then i can't advise you further. Once you have that decision you should get expert advice from an agency near you. Start here. https://advicelocal.uk/

Diablo76

poppy123456 said:

The report is not the decision. It's a recommendation. Although they mostly go with the report they have been known to go against it. Once the decision is made if you're not happy you can request the MR within 1 month of the date of the decision.

Whether it's possible to score more points for a higher award will depend on exactly how your conditions affect you. As i have no idea of this then i can't advise you further. Once you have that decision you should get expert advice from an agency near you. Start here. https://advicelocal.uk/

Thank you, if there is any background noise, even with my Ha, i can not hear anything. I will eventually go totally deaf as said the ENT Dr. I dont like going out because people stare and it makes me really anxious. I only go out if i have hubby or one of my adult children with me. Which is one thing i disagree with in her report as she says i can interact normally with people. I have never thought

Tori_Scope

Welcome to the community @diablo76 Let us know when your decision letter arrives, and what it says, if you can! 

It sounds like you have some good examples prepared if you were to need to submit an MR. But hopefully it won't come to that.

How are you feeling today? I know it can be an anxious wait.

yanni

@Diablo76

I have a similar level of hearing loss to you.

Re mobility: Does the report give you the 10 points for needing someone with you on unfamiliar journeys but say you don't need this help on familiar journeys?

If so, it is a case of explaining in the MR that you need someone with you whether a journey is familiar or unfamiliar because the difficulties you have are the same for both.

One aspect is road safety. People with normal hearing can rely on their hearing to alert them to approaching vehicles out of their line of sight. We can not do that. If we can’t see an approaching danger we don’t know that it is there - so vehicles approaching from behind us in car parks and roads with no pavements, vehicles turning into the road we are trying to cross, vehicles hidden by parked cars, round corners, over hills, round bends etc. Hearing is 360 but we can only look in one direction at a time.Also there is no indication that we are deaf, drivers expect us to hear their approach and stop, step back or speed up to get out of their way and we don’t because we haven’t heard them.

In pedestrianised areas, cyclists and mobility scooters approaching from behind or from round a corner are a danger as we could step into their path if as we don't realise they are there.

These risks don’t change just because a journey is familiar. If you can’t follow a familiar route safely then you can’t do this activity reliably. Give some real life examples of near misses with vehicles / cyclists.

The other aspect is being able to communicate reliably. 

We need to be able to communicate to buy the right bus or coach ticket. 

We also need to be able to communicate and understand communication in order to sort ourselves out if something goes wrong. If we don’t hear a bus driver saying the bus is on diversion or is terminating early we can easily end up somewhere we didn’t intend to be. If we don’t hear the tannoy announcement saying the train is delayed or cancelled or that the platform has changed we can miss the train or wait for a train that isn’t coming. If we can’t communicate with the bus driver or station staff (especially when there is a lot of background noise) how do we sort ourselves out so we can get to our intended destination?

If our car breaks down can we get ourselves somewhere safe until the mechanic arrives if we can't hear approaching traffic? Can we communicate with the breakdown service and understand what the mechanic is saying, communicate with garage staff, sort out how to get to our intended destination (or home)? 

Again give some real life examples of the difficulties you had sorting yourself out when something went wrong on a familiar journey and / or why you needed someone with you to help.

A familiar journey does not need to be local or short, it just needs to be familiar.

https://pipinfo.net/activities/planning-and-following-journeys

With care: it seems to be hard proving we need support when socialising. Despite being awarded 12 points for communicating, the DWP persist in saying I only need prompting to engage with other people!  

 https://pipinfo.net/activities/engaging-with-other-people-face-to-face

 Did you get any points for needing supervision when washing or bathing? You should get 2 points for this if you can’t hear a smoke alarm without your hearing aids in.

 https://pipinfo.net/activities/washing-and-bathing

 

Finally when you do the MR  ask for an ongoing award if you have not already done so, explaining that your hearing loss is not going to improve. That way you should not need to go through the PIP process again for 10 years.

Good luck

Diablo76

I got no points for the journey part as she said there is no clinical reason as to why i would need any help. I got 10 for moving around as i have a issue with my hip. I did get points for the bath but got 2 for being helped. None for communicating with people. I did say i have no idea how much i have spent if the screen isn't shown to the customer, i hate the stares and looks people give me, so go out if i really need too.