Tips and hints for PIP Assessments.

Apologies for long posting. re my sons PIP assessment today.  Firstly, I learnt this today from the SCOPE community website............................. 'And lastly having had your Face to a Face assessment about a week afterwards ring DWP and request a copy of your assessment report which takes about 14 days to arrive once requested. On receiving it you can and should be able to work out what your award may, should be as the dec-makers at DWP usually go with the assessment report, but you still have to wait for the official award letter notification' from https://community.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/257717#Comment_257717

We arrived 10 minutes early today for my adult sons F2F PIP Assessment at 2.30 p.m. The previous client with walking cane was just leaving and I had to help her open the very heavy doors so she could exit. The Assessor came out to explain that her previous Client's assessment had taken longer than expected and she now had to write up her report which would take at least and hour or longer (2.30-4 p.m) She went onto say my son's assessment would then take another hour and his report would take her at least another hour to write up and as she finished work at 5 p.m. there wouldn't be enough time for her to complete my sons assessment so we needed to make another appointment. I was not happy as this is exactly what happened when my son had his ESA review and told her so, I said we would come back in a hour to see how things were going with her writing her report on her previous client.

We returned an hour later and the Assessor told us she was less than half way through her report on her previous client and we needed to make another appointment. I said the same thing could happen at another appointment, she said yes it could because the appointments were made via another office and the problem was the other office didn't allow time for reports to be written. She said she was very sorry but there was nothing she could do.

I told her it was most unfortunate because I would be writing a review for some disability sites and had hoped to be able to write something positive. I also said another appointment would take at least a couple of weeks (and using the tip/hint from the SCOPE site) said 'and after my sons assessment it would be 14 days before I would be able to request a copy of her report' and then several weeks before he got a decision which most likely we would have to appeal.

I also said that among other Disability Groups I also belonged to a group campaigning to have PIP Assessments stopped altogether for life-long disabilities which so far has reached almost 150,000 signatures. She said she agreed the the stoppage of such assessments.

I then told her we needed her to make another appointment and it must be first thing in the morning to avoid the same thing happening again because my son had been up all night worrying and would be in a constant state of anxiety until the appointment. She asked us to go into her office and she would call Independent Assessment Services on loud speaker so I could hear the conversation. Another appointment has now been scheduled for 9 a.m. 22nd August but it will be with a different Assessor.