PIP

Wanted to tell you that I was on DLA with a lifetime award and highest rate mobility, since 1998, for a lifetime disability / hip/back deformity, missing coccygeal bones, scoliosis, an ankylosed hip "Trendellborg Gait" amongst other things. In 2016, at 58 years of age,  I was forced to leave DLA and forced to apply for PIP. Then after sending in lots of info including medical assessment by an orthopaedic surgeon, I was latterly quizzed about my entitlement (or not!!) as a Commonwealth person (at the height of the Windrush Scandal - when a truck came round our district with a sign that said "If you don't have the right to live in the UK, leave now". Since 1998 I had the "leave to remain visa" here in the uk, called the "RIGHT of Abode".......very soon I had the Local Council people telling me I didn't have the right to live in this country. This hostile environment continued. The PIP assessment was with an ATOS woman who claimed to be a physiotherapist. I thought she had a hitlerian touch about her. She said I could lift heavy bags. She ignored much of the medical detail in my Specialists medical assessment, and I had to put in a Re-Consideration form and tolerate an "independent" adviser who was attempting to have my claim annulled. I was so upset, and could not cope at all with the hatred and cruelty I encountered. About seven months later I was awarded mid-rate for first category, and mid-rate category for second (mobility) category, and they said for three years. They cut the DLA months before and I was going to food banks, finding it impossible to make ends meet.
After all that abuse, I was send a 20 page re-assessment form two years after PIP was granted.  So because nothing had changed - except I had a carer come to work for me, doing a re-enablement package for 6 weeks, in early 2017 after winter-time. I came to understand that they are trying to convince us disabled persons that everything "changes" but it does not. 
I cannot grow those bones I need to mobilise normally, I cannot make my lame leg and scoliosis go away, or heal that ankylose hip (and lack of rotation on one hip too), or stop walking with that Trendellborg Gait, to take the roll of fat away from my middle - it indicates back and hip deformity, nor stop the muscle cramps that could be from childhood poliomyelitis, and I am over 70 years old so why are they always re-assessing me, when I do have what they state would make such re-assessment unnecessary? I was fostered as a child because I was disabled and my parents were told I "wouldn't amount to much". I think this PIP - punitive, paternal, fallacious system has to be CHANGED TO stop hurting people. I THINK PIP IS NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE however apologists, who work within the DSW can always say it is a good system for most disabled persons. When it is an arbitrary assessment system, a punitive system, unrelated to specific disability criteria.
After that re-assessment was sent to PIP on time, I then heard nothing from them. After two months I made an appointment with an advocate to ask the DSW / PIP what was happening with my PIP entitlement. To my complete dismay the "Case Manager" told the advocate that he was re-assessing my claim and thought I should not get any mobility component, and I would have to apply for Attendance Allowance instead of PIP. I never spoke to that Case Manager. Since then I have again heard nothing. There is so much arbitrary assessment of disabled people going on through DSW that it is an appalling situation when we get caught up in the system. Many people have committed suicide because of this abuse by DSW. It is supposed to be a Social Model of Disability that DSW follows in their disability benefits, but they don't follow the Social Model either.