Green Paper Related Discussions

Just a note on assessors and assessments. I know multiple companies are involved in this and I also don't want to tarnish every single assessor as some must be doing their best. But, based on my own personal experience (thus not hearsay from another person), the DWP did not look at the whole of my evidence until the tribunal. They looked at some of it in the MR stage, to cherry pick lines from it. But the assessor had not seen my evidence prior to the assessment. We were also told that this was common practice.

Admittedly this was in 2017, maybe it's changed. I did notice a better approach on my review, the person who did my paper based reassessment and such was actually very nice, and I didn't need to speak to them directly at all, just confirm my advocate was entitled to speak for me over the phone.

There was an article a while back - and I apologise that I haven't been able to find it - that due to the number of assessments and how much is paid per assessment to the company, there is a priority on scheduling back to back assessments and not giving assessors time to review other evidence. But there is also a well documented problem of people not assessing conditions they are familiar with.

Now this part is my speculation - but I noticed that there were several inconsistencies between my assessment recording and my assessment report, and also between the assessment report and the initial decision letter. On the recording, you can also hear the assessor typing in sections where, in the assessment report, nothing is recorded. So whether the assessment reports go through other stages of editing or are written up from notes by someone else before they reach the decision maker, to save time - I am not sure.

My assessor seemed very pleasant, if fixated on my physical mobility despite my not claiming for that. She also didn't really understand when I didn't understand a question, but I put that down to her not having autism training. However, when the assessment report section begins with (Amaya reports difficulty with x y z), clearly meeting the criteria for whatever point, and then ends with, "but I think Amaya can do this" and 0 points, it does feel a bit odd.

All this said, I wasn't given my assessment report till tribunal. I wasn't made aware that I could. Maybe in 2017, I couldn't. No idea. So it may be different now. As I said, that part is speculation, just based on how odd and contradictory it sounds.

I thought so to Danny

My experience with the first pip assessor was almost identical. She lied on the report about the only dr letter she acknowledged, the rest she ignored. My GP said it’s the first time he’s had his letter ignored and he went through my award letter and counteracted everything. She also wrote X says she can’t do this but I say she can zero points .

Morning Charlie,

I just migrated over to uc and I called them probably about less than a couple of months ago . I asked about them reassuring everyone on lcwra and the girl who was nice said they have no plans to and don’t have the staff even if they wanted to .

If this were the case MW the assessment centres could rectify this by giving those who deserve longer awards . They seem to keep reassessing some of us when there’s some still on DLA . Not only that but the call centre themselves actually lied to me so they didn’t have to record my assessment. If they recorded it I should have been given the 4? Point. Even the dwp said it had nothing to do with the dwp as it’s the assessment centres who make the decisions. I know someone who went with someone and the assessor saw this person but said they arrived by themselves. It’s outright lying . I don’t trust them and never will after my first assessment left me fighting for two years