 The Welfare Reform Committee for 2015, everyone please make sure that the mobile phones or other electronic devices are silent or switched to airplane mode please. Agenda item 1 is the first item of business and it is a you say evidence session on personal independent payments or has the better known PIP. The session moves split into two panels. The committee will first take evidence from individuals who have either directly experienced a PIP assessment or supported the family members There another range of questions. We're keen to hear about any issues you faced, how easy it was to apply, anything that you think could be improved. However, if at any stage you feel uncomfortable or you don't wish to answer a question, please just say so. We're not here to put you on the spot. We're only looking for advice and information, so just say no to the question and we'll move on to the next one. Ie, nid ydych chi'n ddweud o hyd i gael y cyfriffflars, i'ch gydwyr i'ch gydweithio'r hyfryd yn bodill y cyfriffflars. Rwy'n ddechrau i chi ddweud iawn, ac le'wch i'n ddych chi'n ddych chi'n ddych chi i ddweud i'r gorau? Rwy'n gallwch chi. Diolch yn fawr, Cain Urmanor. Os ylltyf math yn iddo rhaid i ddadfoli gyda'r wingaire diwethafwadau, amgiwch i reall hefyd y lliheirau ariodau i weld. A gyda'r unrhyw y ddau, rydyn ni'n ffwrdd o'ch gwaith i'w gweld y Cymru yw i ddweithio'r ddau'r reall ar gyfer gwyllfa'r rhiforol ar gyfer ddeithasau, yn gyfnodd. Rwyf yn fwy o ddau'r arddangos o'i gyffredin nhw'r bwysig, rwyf yn gyfrifosio'r cysylltu'r rhifoheddiol, ond gallai'n ddau'r rhiforol ar gyfer ei ddau'r rhiforol ar gyfer gwyllfa'r rhiforol. Yn gwneud yma, Cadw'r ysgolodhaeth o'r tymplyn gyda'r Adolphe gymnasic Yr Gympryd am y parteidethau pedwg, eraill y Gymnasic Ysgolodhaeth yn ffawr agor cyflawni. Mae'r rhwnghwch—sylfaen, eraill rwy'n addysg o gyffin ffarnoedd a'r rhwnghwll gyfer heir sy'n serio'n meddwl a blyn i gywed i yn cyflawni'n rhoi i gynhyrchu. Rhywun wedi bod yn cerddau, mae'r cyflawni'n dod o'r rhan fy mod i gyd wedi eu hunain a'r y byddwyr ar y fronten o â'r hyn sydd yn ffaint oherwydd i ddechrau'r cyfleoedd. Fy nid i ddweuddwyr ar y brydigio i ddweud hynny'n dweud i ddweudu i gael, i ddweud o'r ddweud o'r holl, a'r hynny i ddweud o'r cyflwyno ar gyfer oesaf o'r rhai rhanau o'r meirio. Rwy'r golygu i ddweudio'r cyflwyno i ddweudio i ddweudio'r lleol fel y physiotherapist. After two workplace assessments, she was deemed unfit for work with the Greater Glasgow Health Board. With the assistance of the local citizen advice bureau, she completed her PIPA application and was then called for an assessment interview. The outcome of this was the denial of her PIPA award so she sought the help of CAB again to appeal it. As part of this process, I submitted the attached letter of observation on our assessment. On inquiring of a rehabilitation team if they'd been asked to submit a report, they indicated they had not but would ensure one was presented. So then I received the letter stating the appeal was unsuccessful. My daughter then notified Atos that she would be going to a tribunal. Today my daughter received a notification that Atos had closed her case and granted her an award based on the change in the points awarded in the first few indicators. The award includes mobility at the high level. When my daughter asked to see a B about the fact that no change had occurred in the cognitive indicators, they indicated that once the points threshold had been reached there was no need to consult others. The Atos process has caused my daughter great stress and upset during this assessment and much anxiety and upset in the award stage. I feel it is a process not fit for its purpose and not to be reviewed to make it much more client friendly. Going on into the observations on the PIP assessment report which I submitted as part of the appeal I stated there that I, Norman Gray along with my wife Mrs Helen Gray attended Mrs Arnick's assessment at her request due to her anxiety over facing an unknown person and being faced with questions. Since Mrs Arnick's accident on the turn from hospital I've acted on her behalf in matters concerning meetings, reports etc. because she no longer has the cognitive ability to do so as herself. My pregnancy means that Mrs Arnick has less anxiety and can respond to questions knowing that I will intervene or prompt her as necessary. Without the prompt Mrs Arnick will be mused for a short time, visibly become agitated by jiggling her legs and then ask, what do you mean? This happened once during the assessment when she was asked to reply to the memory question. Mrs Gray has been Mrs Arnick's emotional support during these events trying to keep her calm and unfit state to answer the questions. When any questions relating to Mrs Arnick's accident arise Mrs Arnick becomes very emotional and upset as witnessed by her reaction when she was asked about her level of fitness. She burst into tears and said, I used to be so fit but can't do anything now. Our presence at the assessment of Mrs Arnick's request runs counter to the impression given on page 2 of the report that Mrs Arnick does not experience a notable level of anxiety. The report dwells over much on the anxiety factor and feels to acknowledge the true impact with the physical and cognitive factors raised at the interview. All three factors combine in varying degrees at various times in our situation. I would wish to refute some of the comments on page 2 of the report as being contrary to the events at the assessment and the challenge to the detailed points awards. The first part was that the report states that no significant cognitive impairment was found and you could give a full history. The history Mrs Arnick was asked to give was not a full history but one dictated by a series of questions from the assessor and these related to events that are deeply implanted in the brain due to the trauma she experienced. Mrs Arnick's cognitive issues were well demonstrated on the memory task. Three objects were placed before her with other desmaterials roundabout, relatively nearby, including an expensive envelope. When I asked to tell the assessor what the objects were that had been placed, she needed prompting by the assessor, then thought for a time before giving answers which did not lead to the three items but other items on the desk. Eventually she did get all three. She applied to the question to repeat the verbal address that she had been given. She would be mused, cast her eyes around the desk and then gave the address printed on the expenses envelope on the table which happened to be lying there. When I asked to subtract £75 from a pound, she paused for a while and then asked could you write it down because that's the only way I can do it. When I asked to subtract £3.20, she got it wrong at first, then got it right by counting down on her fingers. These events negate the claim that there was no significant impairment found at assessment and on contrary to the indicator scores for reading and understanding, communicating verbally and by infants making budgeted decisions. The next point was you're not on a high dose of medication for anxiety. I failed to see where the conclusion came from. While the assessor verified which medication Mrs Arnaw was taking, he did not ascertain what each one was promoted to prescribe for. I know for a fact that no report was sought from Mrs Arnaw's headway team and Mrs Arnaw's GP has not given her indication of being asked for one. The next point was with regard to taking the children to school. The report overemphasises the role of anxiety in making a decision. At the assessment, Mrs Arnaw indicated that there were a number of factors such as her physical condition under cognitive disabilities which made driving stressful for her and created anxiety over the welfare of her children. However, she could see no alternative to doing this task herself. The next indicator was planning and following journeys. During the assessment, Mrs Arnaw stated she can drive within the confines of Dany and through to Falkirk only because she had been shown the way and has now done it often enough for it to be implanted. She indicated that she was not capable of planning and following an unknown route. I would contend that the assessment and score allocated to this indicator is in earnest and not based on Mrs Arnaw's evidence. There are other aspects of the report that I would take issue with, but those do not stem from evidence presented at the assessment interview. That is my submission. Thank you very much, Mr Gray. I do not know if you have agreed an order. I will just come to you if you have spoken it. I welcome the chance to share my views and experience of the move from the LA to PIP. I have to say that I have not yet moved to PIP. I am awaiting the word of when I will be reassessed for that. It may seem odd that I focus on transport and mobility, but as I hope I will make it clear, that is where I will feel the issues most keenly. I am lucky. I have an indefinite award of DLA at the higher rate for mobility. It will be next year before I am reassessed for PIP. I am already terrified of what that might mean. I am disabled. I am very lucky that there are many in a worse position than I am. I have been disabled to differing degrees since childhood. I had my first surgery at age 11. I have undergone numerous surgeries. I had pins and plates on my hips and pelvis to hit replacements, and I will be due for another set of them at some point very soon. I have a disc removed from my back. Partly that leads to osteoarthritis throughout my body, head to toe, back, hips, neck, shoulders, ankles, hands. It is everywhere. Obviously we take a lot of medication and things for all of that too. My condition is variable. I have a normal underlying level of pain, which is there every day, up to where, if it is particularly bad, I can be just completely incapacitated and unable to get out of bed with back spasms. It is also affected by activity. If I force myself to do something, the likelihood is that I will pay for it soon after. That increases pain and a seizing up of all the joints. I do, however, try to live as normal a life as possible. I work full time, and I have for most of my life since leaving university. My family and friends help me to complete daily tasks and to live as full a life as I can. I start the day early. I take my painkillers, wait for them to kick in before I start the slow process of washing, for which I have a seat in my bath and dressing, which can take a while, but I build that into what I do every day in my life. It can take me up to three hours to be ready to leave the house, and I deal with that every day before I go to work. But I do it and I go to work. Sometimes on a bad day I can't drive because of the pain, so I'm very lucky that my father is able to drive me, and yes, I'll get him to drive me to work rather than take the day off. I'm usually in pain to a greater or lesser degree, but it would be awful to let that stop me doing anything. So what do I think the changes would mean for me? Well, my first thought was on what I understood the purpose of DLA to be. It was my understanding that it was a payment meant to offset the increased costs that I would incur because I am disabled, a way to level the playing field. These costs could be the fact that I pay someone to do my ironing for me, the fact that I seem to damage shoes quickly because of the way I walk and trip, the fact that I can't walk any useful distance and will incur higher transport costs and things. This is the focus of my payment as I receive the higher rate for mobility but nothing for the care component. I choose to use my allowance to fund a car under the motability scheme. Because of my disability, I need a car with a high seating position and I feel that as I drive a lot, especially to get to work and on holidays and the Highlands and Islands, which is easier than trying to negotiate airports and make arrangements for overseas, that I can justify a four-wheel drive vehicle. After all, when it snows, I can't leave the car and walk away. The DLA of course only covers the cost of a standard car. Working allows me to pay the advance payments required to get the car I want. Over the years, I've paid thousands of pounds to lease the cars I have wanted. It's disappointing that some seem to believe that I am given this car and disappointing that such reactions appear to be behind a crackdown and decision to reduce the payments of DLA. Would it be more acceptable if we went back to the days when I would be given an invalid carriage which wouldn't suit my needs as an individual? My award of DLA at the higher rate for mobility is also a passport. It gets me my blue badge. I have an allocated disabled space in the car park beside my house and I do not receive any other benefits, financial or otherwise. The blue badge and the disabled space are invaluable in allowing me to live a normal life. There is allocated blue badge parking at my workplace and I can therefore continue to work and contribute to society, paying my taxes etc, which in turn pay for my DLA. I believe there is a net benefit to society, government funds and my working as opposed to my not working and claiming unemployment benefits. Rough calculations will show that the net gain to the state of my working is around £5,000 per annum as I will detail at the end. Why am I scared by the introduction of PIP? The qualifying criteria have changed and despite the years of clear evidence, because I don't know how I could have faked the X-rays and I'm sure the surgeons weren't operating for fun, I fear that I will no longer be considered eligible. Yes, I can walk a bit on most days and sometimes further than the new limit, but that 20 metres is a pointless distance. What am I supposed to be able to achieve by walking that distance on some days? Every step is agony, but I keep going and I walk the distances I have to between my house and my car, my car and my workplace. I can do a bit around the supermarket, although I can't go shopping as some do as a leisure activity. I can get around a shop and that's enough to pay for it and pain later. Even then, my elderly father carries the shopping for me. Is the fact that I can usually, though in pain, walk 20 metres supposed to somehow indicate that I can live normally, walking the same distances as non-disabled people? My fear is informed by the fight I had to be awarded DLA in the first place. I was turned down, I appealed, I was awarded it for a year. I reapplied, I was turned down, I appealed, it was awarded for a year. I reapplied, I was turned down, I appealed, it was awarded for three years and it was eventually awarded as an indefinite award. So here I go again. Am I on the same cycle? Yes, some medical conditions will improve. However, I'm unlikely to grow a new skeleton. Why can't those of us with indefinite awards and conditions which will not improve just be transferred over to the equivalent PIP status? A lot of time, effort and money will be spent assessing people. It is perfectly obvious we'll always be entitled to PIP. It almost seems that I would be better giving up. Should I decide that I can't handle any of the pain, sitting a wheelchair, doped up with painkillers for the rest of my life? Well, that doesn't seem sensible. I would have the added access hassle that that would bring and my health would suffer. Society would lose the product of my work and taxes. Surely it is better that I do as much as I possibly can, weighing up for myself the costs and benefits on good and bad days of what I can do. Yes, one good day I might walk further to take my nephew somewhere and then I'll spend a few days in utter agony. But surely it's better that that than deciding I can never do anything. Even then I can only achieve these small things because of my motability car and my blue badge. So what would life be like without my DLA or PIP, without my motability car and my blue badge? Be awful. I would no longer be able to work. Public transport from my house to work would be almost impossible. Even the walk to or from the bus stop is likely to be too far and if I stand and wait I might not then be able to board the bus. Standing is worse than walking. Not to mention the timing issues which would be an even earlier start in the morning. Without my car and the allocated parking space I'd be almost housebound. It would mean relying on taxis but how do I pay for them without the DLA or working and the kindness of others. I would lose my independence and I am fiercely independent. I'm single with no children. Who am I supposed to rely on? Yes, I could work and pay for a private car although it's unlikely to be as suitable. But if I can't park near enough to my house or my work what am I supposed to do? Should I say goodbye to socialising if I can't get close enough to the venue? Should I never do my own shopping if the walk from the car park is more than I can manage? So I am terrified. I can't see how my life can continue as it is if I lose my DLA at the higher rate for mobility. Do I think about whether life would be worth it? Honestly? Yes, I have contemplated ending things if I don't receive PIP and not at the rate to allow me to continue to have my mobility car and blue badge. For me it is all or nothing. I do not qualify for any care payment. I also fear that those making decisions confuse the fit to work tests with the PIP assessment. Yes, I'm clearly able to work and I have worked for most of my adult life. That doesn't mean I'm not disabled and do not incur additional costs because of that disability or do not need some special arrangements to allow me to live my life. I'm also gravely concerned about the many others in the same situation, terrified of losing their benefits, losing hope when they are refused PIP. I fear that there will be an increase in extreme poverty amongst the disabled. But don't worry, you won't see it. They'll all be stuck indoors. And I fear there will be an increase in suicide amongst the disabled. I'm lucky. I'm literate, I'm able to understand the forms and questions. There are others who will, this will just happen to, who will be too nervous to complain or make a fuss, who will accept a decision of the state must be correct. As an experiment, get a pedometer or similar, stand at your front door and walk 20 metres. Is that enough to get you where you need to be? Park is normal at the supermarket. Walk 20 metres. Have you even reached the door yet? Does the fact that someone can struggle and walk 20 metres mean that they do not have a mobility disability? I think not. Surely, in fact, it's actually easier for someone in a wheelchair to go further than someone who walks but in pain. I am one of the hard-working majority. And yet I'm made to feel like some terrible scrounger or that I'm claiming something under false pretenses. The stress is awful. Trust me, I'd rather not be in pain and not claim DLA or PIP. I live as well as I can and over the years I've found various ways of making things easier to gauge how much pain something is likely to cause. No one else will realistically be able to measure the pain I feel, the compromises I make or the decisions I take. But the evidence that I am disabled is clear in my medical records. So what should I do? Continue as I am. Planning and deciding based on my knowledge and experience. Keep working and contributing. Or give up. Stop work, being a wheelchair before the PIP assessment comes along. I know what I want to do. I know what I think is best for myself and society. But PIP reassessment makes it seem better to go the other way. Unfortunately one day I'll be wheelchair bound and even less able than I am today. I'd rather put that day off as long as I can. I've calculated what it would cost the state if I do not receive PIP and have to give up work. If I keep getting DLA or PIP and working so paying my tax and national insurance there's a net gain to the state and the taxpayer of around £5,000 per annul. Cos I pay around £7,800 in tax and national insurance. It's just under £3,000 for the year. If I lose the DLA PIP and have to give up work there's a net loss of around £11,500 per annul which is significant if I'm going to work for another 20 odd years. And that comes from the loss of the approximate tax and national insurance for around £7,800 and the payment to me of the income support which would be at least the £3,765 which would be the basic level. If I couldn't work because of access issues etc because of DLA to the loss of my blue badge the loss of the car then I would presumably receive at least £72.40 per week in benefit which is more than the cost of providing me with DLA and allowing me to contribute to society. Even looking at it is just swapping DLA for income support ignoring the tax and national insurance it's a loss to the state of the tax pair of around £800 per annul and I've given some details there. So the net gain to date is around £5,000 per annul. Obviously I understand that that also pays for the NHS etc but being able to walk 20 metres is not sufficient criteria to say I'm not disabled I'm not entitled and I hope this review helps you in your deliberations and somehow something can be done. Thank you very much Moira. I think we're going to Lindsay next. So my name's Lindsay Souter and last June my husband had a stroke. His recovery has been slow and we've had quite a few setbacks. In December 2014 we started the PIP application process we completed and submitted the form and we had help and support from the Grapevine Disability Information Service in Edinburgh. One was originally sent a letter asking him to attend a face-to-face assessment for PIP in Dunfermline. We actually live on the outskirts of Edinburgh. In the PIP notes it does explain that no one will be expected to travel more than 90 minutes from a Clemens home to an assessment centre. When we looked into this we found that it would have taken us around two and a half hours to get from our house to the assessment centre being two buses on a train. My husband struggles to use public transport and in the past had to get off buses due to there being too much noise, too many multiple inputs, causing them to be overloaded. Again, coupled with this is vulnerability and if he's in an unfamiliar town or setting he's very anxious. When I asked if the appointment given could be rearranged in a more convenient location they wouldn't accept my authority to change this and they requested that my husband had to be present to confirm this agreement and call them back. I complained to ATOS about this because I was really complaining that they'd not followed their own rules. They said I couldn't complain so I then phoned the DWP back and complained directly to them. After that, an ATOS official got back in touch with me, offered me an appointment two days before the original appointment and at Argyll House in Edinburgh. We made it to the pip face-to-face assessment. We had to park away from the building. My husband didn't want to be dropped off while I parked the car because, as I said, he struggles to deal with new surroundings and people that he doesn't know. I waited and we were taken into the room by the assessor. I felt that the assessor purposely seated me behind the computer screen monitor so she could not see me and my husband was seated at the other side of me, at the other side of the room. A consequence of stroke can be a loss of peripheral vision so seating the carer of a stroke patient in the peripheral field of vision shows real unawareness. The examination took about 20 minutes in total. My husband was asked a series of questions and she typed during the duration of the appointment. I was expecting the form the form that we'd filled in that I'd taken hours to fill in to be the basis of the examination it wasn't mentioned. At no time was I asked for any particular feedback despite my husband being very nervous. He's also affected by a stammer which impacts on his verbal communication when he's in unfamiliar situations. Again, information in the form not referred to. Some of the questions my husband was asked were not reflective of his ability to manage certain tasks. For example, managing budgeting decisions, he was asked to extract 7 from 100 and then carry on. He did that very slowly. I've actually discussed these tests that were carried out and I've been told by mental health professionals and my husband's stroke consultant that a mini-mental state test is not a valid way to assess cognitive impairment after stroke. Equally, working out the change from £5 does not equate with complex financial decisions or transactions. I have had to renegotiate our home and contents insurance after our insurers withdrew cover with the life insurance provider. Move utilities for a better deal and I'm dealing with our mortgage lender at the moment. My husband cannot deal with this. When a decision letter was received, my husband was awarded no points for any activity. The assessor described that this was consistent with our description of the typical day. Informal observation at your consultation and the findings of your mental state examination. At no point during the PIP face-to-face assessment was the reliability criteria referred to, which are explicitly set out in the PIP regulations. According to the social security personal independence payment regulations 2013, activities must be able to be carried out safely to an acceptable standard repeatedly and within a reasonable time period. We do not feel that these criteria were used to assess any activity. We are now requesting a mandatory reconsideration detailing the specific details of my husband's impairment and how this affects and impacts his ability to carry out daily living and mobility activities. The letter was submitted on 17 March, only logged on the DWP mail system as of 30 March, as of today I've had nothing from them. The whole process has been extremely upsetting for us. We now face longer delays with the payment of a benefit, which is there to provide a safety net. We actually feel like we're begging for this payment. We've paid for this insurance and just wanted to be treated fairly by the system. I trusted the system. I didn't make a fuss at the assessment. I trusted we would be awarded what we were entitled to. My husband is not working because of the effects of stroke and this has affected him on so many levels. I'm the main breadwinner and I've had to take a lot of time off for appointments using annual leave to deal with all these matters. I'm very glad of the support of third sector charities like the Great Find Service. Thanks very much Lindsay and finally Mari. I found the form didn't give as much opportunity to make a case as I would have liked. There are only a few lines to answer each question, which do not allow for someone having multiple issues with the same task. Having seen the scoring system it appears that they only allocate one set of points for each section so for chronic illnesses like ME which I have, where there's a little wrong and a lot of functions the cumulative effect is missed and the applicant may lose out on benefit they need compared to someone who has a single clear cut impairment. The process of completing the form is draining and the time allocated does not allow for it to be spread out. I had some of the information needed in an online diary I'd been using for therapeutic purposes but I still needed to ask for an extension. I ended up printing pages to stick into the form as this was easier than writing it out. Having been denied DLA twice I went into a lot of detail in the form and hoped that I would be spared a further physical assessment having had an ESA and DLA medical in October 2012 and a DLA tribunal in January 2013 and having gathered as much written evidence as I could to include with the application. I applied in August 2013 and did not hear anything for months. I eventually called the DWP in the spring who advised the application was with Atos. I called them and was told it will be soon you've been waiting a long time. There was no qualification of how soon soon meant. I got a letter advising of an appointment to have a face-to-face assessment on April 28 2014. The appointment was in Dundee despite me having made a request to be seen in Perth due to additional fatigue and pain travelling would cause. This request was not even acknowledged, never mind granted. By this point I let it slide and asked a friend to drive me to the appointment to avoid further delay in getting a decision. Having been turned down for DLA twice and my income having reduced, I've been barely scraping by, mostly ignoring things that might help me due to the expense. The assessment itself seemed to duplicate a lot of what was in the form. The assessor was pleasant and courteous enough and he had a trainee with him who was also pleasant. The process was explained clearly at the outset. The structure of the interview seemed to be unnecessarily repetitive. First naming each diagnosis, then medications for each diagnosis, then symptoms of each condition, then a typical day. All of this information was in the form and I found that I was repeating things from one section to the next and having to get the assessor to go back and add information to previous sessions. For people like me with more than one diagnosis and lots of symptoms arising from me, this was a long-winded process. I was conscious of the assessor trying to move through the list of questions and as the interview went on I got more fatigued and found it hard to keep up. I felt had forgotten to put forward a lot of things that might have been helpful. I think the physical assessment might have been cut short due to the time the other parts had taken. By this point I was exhausted. The assessor kept telling me not to push myself but it's difficult not to when you rely on pushing yourself to get through life and I was in pain before I started. I hope this will be taken into account. The assessor appeared to be writing what I was telling him and didn't make the mistake of an EMP in my previous DLA application where I was given lots of advice and inverted commas and the report was more of what he had told me than what I had told him. The physical assessment was largely the same in both cases and for a complex condition like ME doesn't seem to provide the opportunity to evidence the symptoms enough to justify the energy expended. I was advised that I should have had an answer in six to seven weeks and to contact the DWP after four to five to make sure they hadn't lost the form. Very confidence inspiring. I then received a letter from ATOS advising my assessment had been chosen for audit which usually took a few days and I got a letter after confirming the audit had been completed. It would have been helpful to have updates on the progress of the application. With my DLA applications I received letters apologising for not having made a decision within the target time but with PIP it appears that unless you phone and pester you don't get any information. It's not every day I feel I have the energy or the brain power to make a chase up call. I feel it's wrong to keep somebody in poverty because of disability and when it's the best part of a year stuck in a backlog with no information it's difficult to feel positive about the support available. Even a backdated payment does not make up for months of having to make do to the detriment of your health. It does not seem to be too much to ask for them to get it done in time and get it right first time but apparently it is. I got my decision a year after I applied and I'd only been given four points for mobility, not enough for an award. There was little explanation of how they reached the scores just she can do X, Y, Z unaided. I requested further information and was told I could have a phone call but no further written explanation. The report stated I had attended the assessment alone having driven myself there which was not only incorrect but further assumptions were made on the basis of this. It was stated that as I could drive I could do other activities for example cooking or showering. I had stated I could only drive short distances and that this exhausted me and that I only drove because I couldn't walk far. I made the mistake of trying to apply for a reconsideration myself. The friend who had attended the medical with me was unwell and I asked for help at various stages but did not give anyone else full responsibility. I ran out of time and on the advice of a colleague telephone to note my intention to apply for a reconsideration and further information would follow. I specifically asked if there was a deadline and I was told there was not. I'd been given training handouts on appeals and was advised to point out the evidence for each descriptor. Since ME symptoms meant a lot of the points were scored on the reliability test I could maybe do the activity once but not repeat it or it would take me far too long. For example this meant describing these for each descriptor too. A friend at Mindspace Recovery College arranged help for my MP's office. They got a copy of the ATOS report. The decision letter had been lifted almost verbatim from the ATOS report. None of the evidence I had submitted had been referred to. Even statements within the ATOS report that agreed with my evidence were ignored. For example that I walked very slowly or had a weak grip. I contacted my GP surgery for some information. There were changes in the year it took but also I asked for copies of information submitted to the DWP. I had asked the GP surgery for some evidence when I submitted the form but had been advised to let the DWP request it. When I requested the information for the reconsideration they agreed to reduce the administration charge to £5 which was still a struggle. It looks like no information was requested by the DWP from them. The decision letter came for the reconsideration before I had a chance to submit the information. It was only three weeks after the original decision but referred to not having received my additional evidence. I contacted my MP's office again but the lady who had helped me before was on leave and the person I spoke to said he thought it was a reasonable period. Collating the evidence took longer than I'd expected. I'd been put off by the preemptive reconsideration. During that period a lot had happened. The job was much bigger than I thought and with no energy and difficulty with concentration progress was very slow. The submission ended up being massive. By this stage it was a light appeal. During this period I had also been assessed for ADHD which was diagnosed in December. Although I had not known about this at the time of the form I had described the symptoms but put them down to ME brain fog. For me this explained why activities at work which had structure and support were a lot more manageable than activities at home. The appeal was on 27 March and the panel seemed a lot less hostile than for my DLA one although the same judge was present. The welfare rights officer thought it had gone well but was given a letter stating the same four mobility points that ATOS had given me were awarded. I'm awaiting a statement of written reason but my experience after the DLA tribunal was that there's very little that can be counted as an error in law which is the only relevant thing left now. Thanks very much Mari and all of the witnesses and thanks for being so generous with the personal information that you've provided as I'm sure the committee members will want to explore a bit further some of the circumstances that you outlined to us but can I kick off by trying to get some clarification on your understanding of the process that you looked at the work capability assessment in the past and initially there was a lot of confusion about the role of ATOS and the role of the Department of Work and Pension even to the extent that the DWP were referring to ATOS assessments knowing full well that it was their assessments so it's just to try and get an understanding of your knowledge of the process all of you referred to being assessed by ATOS but in certain parts of Scotland the process is conducted by Salis were any of you assessed by Salis or did you know that it was ATOS that was doing it directly it was ATOS okay I think there's a geographical split some parts of the country are covered by Salis and others by ATOS regardless of that the assessment process whoever carries it out does it on the basis of assessments that are the work of the Department of Work and Pensions did all of you know that that was the situation that these assessments were actually the work of the DWP and not ATOS themselves I'd just like to say that I've had to phone the DWP and ATOS when you phone the DWP the people on the phone are absolutely delightful and they're very quick to say we've heard that about ATOS when you start to complain they may be carrying out their bidding but I think the DWP have taken great comfort that they aren't doing the work and it gives them this opportunity to distance themselves and be so nice on the phone to you because it's not them We've heard that before Lindsay that confirms exactly the understanding that we've built up of the process and it certainly confirms to me just exactly how that process is being conducted another question that I have we discovered in previous investigations that we've undertaken that additional information which is sought by ATOS from doctors isn't always provided in your circumstances was additional information provided by doctors was asked for by ATOS and was it provided by the doctor when it was asked for they said on the forums that they would ask for the information and my doctors and my rehab team produced reports once it went to the reconsideration part of the process they did produce reports in time for the original assessment but they never had them the person assassin didn't have any of the reports in front of them at all and then when the reconsideration came back it said they'd had no other further medical reports I knew because my rehab team had been giving me reports that they had written so I knew they had been written and submitted and they were telling me that nothing had been like they didn't have anything again that's an interesting point an important point to establish was that the same for everyone else Mary? 90p surgery wasn't asked for information they had provided information for the 2DLA applications I'd done and they'd given me copies of the forms they'd completed but they weren't asked for anything so I got information from elsewhere I go to Minespace Recovery College and I'd asked them to do a letter which I submitted with the form and I'd asked various other people for evidence as well that went in with the form but it was solely the assessment that the decision was based on we submitted quite a few letters that had come that we had that were consultant letters about the condition we also gave the name of various health professionals including a stroke nurse who was perfectly willing to give them information also a clinical neurologist but they were not approached for information Your GP or any of the people you identify will never contact They were never contacted Do you have any information? I haven't gone through the certainly from the DLA days it took them a while sometimes they asked for it and sometimes they didn't I'll open it up to my team members and go to Kevin first Thank you, convener Mari in your evidence you said that you had some difficulties in work but it was more structured are you still working just now as well? I was off sick for a year and then I returned on a part time basis a citizen's advice bureau I worked for so I've been very lucky with the support that I get and that if it wasn't for that I wouldn't be working and Mari you're obviously still at work and as you've stated in your evidence if your payment was withdrawn you wouldn't be working which would actually be an additional cost to the state Do you think that any of this is logical in any way, shape or form? No It makes no sense to kind of block my way to work when I can contribute This seems to be a situation which is worrying a lot of folk who are currently living the independent life that you say that you're living in terms of still being able to work Do you have any shared experiences with others who are in the same boat as you? Do you have any support group or anything that you go to? I don't I haven't felt I've needed to just because my family and friends are very supportive around me and have a good understanding of what's going on Things like my elderly she's now getting elderly angst to be very helpful over there in the orthopedics world and she understood all the things completely so when I came out with surgery and had to get my elastic stockings put on she came round every morning to do it for me so I've had a lot of support from family and friends in that way Lindsay, in terms of your husband's stroke he worked up until until that point Absolutely, he worked for the local authority he still technically works for the local authority he's signed off sick at the moment obviously we're coming up to the year for that and there has been improvement I mean I was hoping that Pip was maybe a mechanism for him to go back maybe on reduced hours it would certainly help that at the moment we're still very very up in the air but yes he's worked for at least the last 20 years and at 52 hopes to continue working still working basically Technically yes and Mrs Arnott obviously you were in work until your accident too I was in work they were very good they gave me some time off and then they allowed me to come back on a trial basis I worked for the NHS in an orthopedic ward and I worked on my own because I did weekends so I was the only physio in the ward and it was deemed after two years and a couple of failed attempts at getting back that they couldn't hold the job for me any longer so I was medically retired but I still have my own practice which I can't do much in terms of hands on but I've tried to keep going just so that I had something to go to to do his work So you went back you struggled a wee bit and eventually they retired you on medical grounds but you're still actively trying to work Yes, I do blue badge assessments one day a week as part of a I'm subcontracted to do that and I can manage that because it's a form and although there are questions on the form that I have to go through and ask people but I also use a bit of my physio knowledge so if someone has a particular condition I'm kind of trying to then question that line rather than just stick completely to the form and I feel that that assessment I had for the PIP I think that I went into it with that expectation that the way I do the blue badge assessments would be similar to the way that the assessments would be handled but yes, I still do one day a week I can't really do more than one or two days a week in terms of working So we've seen unfortunately in the press from the mouths of some politicians this division between strivers and skyvers from what I hear here you would all fit into striver category without a doubt would you say what do you feel about that use of language in this scenario where you know it's one of you it was Lindsay said almost like begging after you've put in to the state over a period Lindsay do you want to how do you feel about all of this it's easy targets it's divisive you are trying to demonise a section of society and it's it's wrong obviously it upsets me and angers me in equal measure and is that extremely upsetting for your husband particularly in the situation that he's in is he feels that I've pushed him into performing like a monkey at one of these assessments I feel it's money that you pay your national insurance and that's for the hard times and we should definitely be getting a little help back but he of course has seen the press the television and he went very much with the attitude I'm doing this for you I will not get this award and it's kind of true what's happened he hasn't got the award and it's actually made things between us difficult and I didn't need that thank you so yes it's not helpful when you think this this will catch me when I fall I've personally worked full time since I was 17 I didn't even have much of a maternity break when I had my daughter 23 years ago so this is something that is new to us claiming some sort of benefit but going in with the attitude that we're not going to get anything wasn't helpful and going in with the attitude that I was making him do this didn't help matters either so a lot of strain because of the system that's in place at this moment absolutely and everybody here is giving a story of how they want to use benefit to keep going not to retire on it and have an easy life all you hear in the press or media is about how these people are at it, they're taking money out of hardworking people's pockets and doing nothing while they're working away and it's just not true and the application process definitely feels like that's the point of view they're taking it from everybody who applies for PIP is disabled whether they're disabled and to the criteria that's in place or not is what they're assessing but people apply for it because they're disabled and they don't treat it like that they treat it like everybody's trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes and get something for nothing that they're not entitled to obviously you've got some experiences at the citizens advice as well Mary my experience of meeting with folks who have had difficulties either DLA or PIP is being used either to keep them in work and keep their independence or to allow another family member to go to work which wouldn't happen if they didn't have the DLA or PIP is that something you've come across in the citizens advice bureau as well quite a lot, it's debt I deal with rather than benefits but a lot of clients I get are in debt things like rent-a-rears rather than consumer debts and it's been because they've not had enough income to live on a lot of people have been put off applying for PIP altogether I see a lot of people with invisible illnesses that I have autoimmune diseases where they can do a little bit today but then if they do it today they can't do it tomorrow and a lot of them either haven't applied at all because they know they're not going to get it or they've not got it a lot of people are turning to self-employment as a way to try and work around their condition where they might not have the option of an understanding employer and a lot of people in that situation are not earning enough to live on they're doing more than they should be their health's deteriorating but they've just got to keep going Do you feel that in terms of the assessments that you've had that you have been listened to in any way, shape or form do you think that some of the folks who have done the assessment actually understand the situations that you find yourself in and if you look at the 20 metres for example you know, we've had others who have said, yeah, I could walk 20 metres and as you rightly said Moira where does that take you anyway but you know, they've said I can walk 20 metres but then for the next week I'm completely out of action do these folk actually understand that that 20 metres is just absolute nonsense what does it actually prove they haven't assessed me on that yet but 20 metres is clearly not a, it's just not a logical distance, I don't know what the distance is but if there's medical evidence of a disability I don't see whether it's 20 metres or 50 metres is actually relevant if I'm in pain on one step then I'm in pain at 100 steps and I'll pay for it more tomorrow so do you think that the assessment itself and you've all experienced in one way, shape or form is in any way useful to coming up with a reason or shouldn't get a payment it's very arbitrary I mean, with this one it really should have been a proper cognitive assessment or at least looked at that that had been done by a qualified professional but again, as I said to you a mini mental state test which is something to say to somebody who might have a concussion or do they have Alzheimer's it's not a valid way to test some of these cognitive impairments or even a learning difficulty they're not they're not decent tests for what you're testing for and they seem to use the same test for every single person how can that possibly be right? Moira? I would agree I would hope pass the cognitive assessment quite well but it doesn't and I won't get any points for that and that's fair but that doesn't detract from the fact that I do have a disability and other complications and I think what it shows is we talked about the skyver and striver idea is yeah, there are skyvers there will always be, there always have been and they're easy to get some evidence on, the problem is no one actually looks for all of us because we're at work I found when it was the mobility part we're talking about a supermarket I told them I go to a small farm food near me because it's very small I can kind of get most of what I can use out of there in one aisle and so we were likening the length I would walk of the aisle to the size of the room and they set up the assessment so that when you come in to the reception there's a walk between there and the assessment room so they can look at you walking and they'd commented that I walked very slowly I think it was 10 metres they'd had me walking I couldn't finish the physical assessment because I was too fatigued and impen by then and then somehow I can walk 40 or 50 metres no qualification of that no looking at the other evidence so it's like an act of tokenism sort of saying we've considered you can walk that amount we've assessed it it's not up for debate anymore they didn't look I've got a blue badge which I got through physical condition rather than through the benefit route and I'm virtually unable to walk for that but miraculously I can walk 50 metres and everything's fine for benefit purposes the cognitive assessment I got the same one counting back in 7s from 100 at the time of the assessment I didn't know I had ADHD but during other parts of the assessment I was describing difficulties with executive function things like planning journeys and budgeting I was explaining where that has an effect on me budgeting obviously I've got specialist knowledge in the work I do but you take away the structure of being at work and it can be quite different but they just weren't taking that evidence into account they ticked the box they'd done the assessment I passed that I could do anything I was wearing a hat so they said you can get your arms over your head you can cook a meal reliability tests which are supposed to have in the law how often you're supposed to be able to do it how well you're supposed to be able to do it how much energy you're supposed to have left after having done it they don't take those into account at all so most of my case is based around those reliability tests because I can maybe do something on one day but that's me exhausted and I couldn't repeat it but no reference to them at all Alison I don't remember very much about the actual assessment itself I just remember that it was quite a scary prospect to go through I know from what my dad said that I did different tests like the other ladies were saying about counting and doing many things for me my award in the end even though I got it still has that I have no significant cognitive impairment and for me it's the cognitive stuff that is the hardest thing to live with it completely disrupts my life totally making a meal or whatever I struggle with that but that's not really a necessary thing for me I forget to pick my kids up from school I forget to take them to somewhere I start taking them somewhere and they go mum you haven't brought that bit into the plan today you've forgotten that we need to do that I miss out steps in the recipe there's so many things like higher functions brain wise and I scored zero for all of these things even though I've appealed it and I got the award it still says I have no cognitive impairment and I think you said the test that they did like I had a cognitive test done by my rehab team and they were extensive like really extensive and I had a report produced and I produced that report at my assessment that I had to go to how that's professional people knowing what they're doing and they still said no cognitive impairment and all the things that they asked me to do like these other ladies are saying once I could lift my arm up and I could do stuff with my leg I'm a physio I've pushed myself really hard to get my strength back even though I have great difficulty with one side I put a finger on my leg and said can you lift against that there was nothing I just felt when you were talking all the time and when the report came none of what was said or discussed in the room was mentioned in the report and we've asked for you were allowed to ask for the assessor's report you could make a request to put that in when we still haven't got that and that was October of last year so I just feel it's not it's not a fit assessment and certainly the way it was done was very cold very clinical I'm really anxious anyway and because it was a new person to meet that immediately makes it very difficult for me to get off at speed and we were kind of trying to keep up with him which at that point in time which was six months ago I found very difficult to do and was he going to take us upstairs he was going to take us upstairs and it was my dad they said no I wouldn't manage to do that and we had to go in the lift but he wasn't happy and he didn't want my mum and dad in the room and he kept asking why do you need your parents here I just felt I was doing something wrong being there and asking for this and I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't the rehab team pushed me to do it and I'd put it off for a whole year thinking I'm going to go back to work Thank you Annabelle to follow by Joan Thank you very much for your frankness Mr Arnott you used the phrase about the process of not being client friendly and I'm aware from reading all your submissions that experiences have ranged from practical difficulties like Mary and I think you Mrs Souter Mary you wanted to be interviewed in Perth but you had to go to Dundee eventually you went to Dundee Mrs Souter you challenged that you were expected to go to Dundee Firmland but eventually you were interviewed in Edinburgh and I was wondering was location for the interview an issue on the planet or were you able to be seen where it suited you I was seen in Stirling which is not that far away but I wasn't really but I had never driven to Stirling by that point so my parents came and took me I was given a nine o'clock appointment I have four young children who needed to go to school at nine o'clock plus my parents were coming to Dundee to pick me up and they wouldn't change the appointment time to a later time in a day being provided so although it was close to me because it was only Stirling it still wasn't as convenient as it could have been okay and the assessment was done at Spring Cair which is on the outskirts of Stirling so getting access even public transport is not possible so that's another factor it was the remoteness of that from Stirling my friend had her assessment the same week as my husband who lives in the same place I do was offered North Berwick which again to get to from where we live is impossible it would have been a bus into town to Waverley and a train out to North Berwick and then I don't know how you were supposed to get to the assessment centre from then same week convener does anyone know how the appointment system works what we need to do Annabelle we have discussed with the claps what we wanted to try and establish today with some of the issues and this is clearly an issue and what we have agreed to do is to invite Atos and Salas to come before us I'm not sure where we are with that but I know that that discussion is taking place so if we can establish the issues we'll be able to put them to the organisations in due course I've got two more specific questions convener, if I may Maure I was very struck by what you were saying in evidence and I read through your submission and having had some experience of some of what you're suffering from sympathy not these backspasm and the arthritic condition is it your impression from what you can understand of the criteria the DWP criteria that the criteria are very absolute because you were explaining how one morning even if it was meaningful you might be able to walk 20 metres somewhere another morning you can't you probably could just spend three hours getting dressed crawling to the car get to place of work that's not an unusual and one morning you might not even manage that I'm lucky that the nature of my job and my understanding employer is that I can occasionally for example I'm going to work for home today because you can't physically get out I don't do it often because I'm so do you feel that these criteria are too absolute not enough flexibility to there's no understanding of any a changing condition and there also has been no understanding that you might manage that but it doesn't mean it's easy and you manage it because you're forcing yourself to do it I understand and you might manage a trip to the supermarket but be in very considerable pain the following day my routine is to work it with my father because I can't carry stuff that just adds to pain we go to our particulars we need that, that and that this wandering up and down is not not for me we'll drive home, he'll carry all the shopping into the house I'll get into the house, sit down he makes me a hot water bottle I get my foot up on a stool and that's it I'm there then don't move for the rest of the the day so for someone with your condition the inflexible nature of their criteria is not actually getting a proper picture of what life is like for you it doesn't get any picture of my life at all and as I said in the submission my bones are showing up on an x-ray I've had surgeries which were not just amusement but that doesn't seem to be considered at all if I can drag myself 20 metres to achieve something then that's enough I will no longer be eligible and convener reaching on from that what struck me from the submissions was what seems to me the absolute pointless bureaucracy of if you have a diagnosed condition the consequence of which is very restricted and increasingly restricted mobility what an earth is the point of having to go back for further assessments and interviews I'd like to comment on your condition because as you said your surgeons didn't make up the operations your x-rays are there I'm not going to grow a new skeleton I'm not going to deteriorate further so I've been through all the appeals for the DLA got to the point of an indefinite award and I'm now back at the beginning of the process again nothing in my condition will have changed The prospect, Myra, that assuming you satisfy the new criteria for a PIP it's the revisiting of the assessment that's both very worrying and very disruptive I do not think I will get I have no expectation now that they'll award it I'll certainly appeal it I'll put in all my evidence but if they stick to it, can you drag yourself 20 metres, I won't qualify But you'd be entitled to say now and again I can drag myself 20 metres but in between I can't drag myself anywhere and that's what the inflexibility of the criteria is unable to pick up on and you also said that at the moment your status as a passport for your blue badge I mean this is a facture question I don't know the answer is PIP a passport to a blue badge or is that maybe you know if you have the points from higher mobility If you're on the highest level for mobility and the highest level for your actual award then you will get automatically qualify for a blue badge for the blue badge you still have to fill in the application form to be told that you automatically qualify for a blue badge and the application form I know because they come in every day and they're worried that they didn't write the right information on the form so it's the same sort of system it's just slightly better Who are on DLA but I've never applied for a blue badge but they'll be entitled to if they apply for it Right, okay and I think my final question with your indulgences Going back to your general point about the process not being client friendly and listening to what you know you have all encountered Do you get the impression that despite the hugely detailed nature of the form that once you got into the interview there was some kind of disconnect between the information you had provided in the form and the questions you were being asked and you obviously felt frustrated in some cases that the information that had been provided and the information that the interview you were providing did not actually get through a filter into the final report My impression My impression really was that the assessor had probably read through the report to have been there but then started off on a clean sheet straight away even if the information he said started putting into the computer was right back at the very beginning again and then all the information was there for example all Alison's medication that had to be really fed back into the computer so there was no link up between the two and there was no recognition on the way he treated Alison of her condition there was no recognition that she had difficulty with memory or anything else that was all ignored and it was just cold that the information you provided would be the bedrock for the interview and then questions could be asked around the issues highlighted in the form Thank you very much Joan, to be far by clear Thank you, convener and thank you to the witnesses for taking the time to speak to us today I personally found it very informative I wanted to address my first question to Mr Gray and Mrs Arnott on your evidence today when you talked about how you had failed on appeal and then you said you told us that you were going to a tribunal and then the way it comes across is that almost arbitrary you then heard have you any idea what made them change their minds? I have no idea I mean we were literally a week away from the tribunal date and I got another letter in in fact I tell you to be perfectly honest I got a letter in my OT was in with me so she was even witness it I got a letter in saying I had got a Christmas bonus which the letter came in March I got a Christmas bonus as part of my award for pip and I'm thinking well I don't have an award for pip and then the day after that I got a letter through saying that the decision had been made not to go to tribunal and that I was to get the full pip that I had applied for Yeah they would have had the opportunity to do that much earlier because all the evidence including what you submitted for your appeal was very extensive wasn't it? I mean I was by that time I was absolutely worked up like I was totally frightened of going to the appeal and I didn't really know what I was going to do when I got there I didn't really want to go I just wanted it to all be over and just not bother anymore so to be up like that and then to get this letter like I didn't know whether to laugh or cry it was that kind of and I didn't really understand it I had to phone the people to say is this right? because it just seemed to just come in the post I'm scared of the post as it is that's one of the things I've now happened so all these letters that come are like they make me very anxious anyway so to get all these letters and then to find out at the end that they were giving it to me anyway was a bit pointless So they put you through all that stress and possibly you know like you were entitled all along about they put you through all that stress Is it your intention obviously I imagine the way you are you want to move on but have you given any thought to kind of trying to find out what made them change their mind in such an arbitrary way? Yes I've still asked for the assessor's report from the original assessment that I had and I've also asked I had a welfare officer helping me and I could do the form myself and he's asked as well for information because he was handling my case for the tribunal and he was giving no information either he was just told that my case had been withdrawn from the tribunal date so we don't know This is, and just going across the panel this whole issue of appeals and it's obviously something that comes up a lot and we know from national statistics that quite often these atos decisions are overturned on appeal and I think you said that three times a decision There was more, that's back in DLA terms but yes it was you don't get it, I appeal you got it for a year apply again don't get it, appeal, get it for a year and that went on, I think had four or five one-year awards and then two or three three-year awards and then they eventually gave me my indefinite award Your disability between these different assessments and appeals I assume is the same? Exactly the same and deteriorating if anything Yes and so do you think that do you sometimes get the impression that they're working to targets then and that it's only by pushing them on appeal that they then arbitrary change their decision? That was certainly as I went through the DLA process yes that they'll just automatically discount everyone in the hope that that'll knock off a certain percentage that won't appeal and then carry on like that and in terms of your own experience with what comes across and I know that other colleagues have brought this up is the almost disregard of medical evidence but my understanding from reading some of our briefings on what PIP is supposed to be is that actually the very heart is that medical evidence is not supposed to inform PIP because it's supposed to be not the condition but what you can actually do and when we had actually evidence from the chap who was appointed by the government to review how PIP assessments were being done he was keen to ensure that the assessments were not seen as medical assessments I suppose if they're done by a non-medic and that non-medic is not taking into account the medical evidence because that's not what PIP's supposed to be in the legislation it kind of really kind of questions the whole the legislation itself not the way it's not the way it's been conducted not the day-to-day assessments but that is very hard, that is very philosophy it's flawed because it's ignoring the medical condition really it's saying that's not relevant I wondered what you thought of that I kind of had great hopes for PIP because having been turned down for DLA twice I thought there's a point system that's going to be there's not that kind of flexibility for somebody to just decide one way or another there's a kind of format for it I thought the reliability tests were built into law when I was giving training information from work to do my reconsideration it looks like that was put in there to take a lot of case law out of the equation rather than anything else there's been a lot of case law for DLA and they wanted to kind of pre-empt that so in theory they do have the workings if they applied it as it was written they do have the workings to catch most disabilities I think taking out the low rate has probably made a big difference it kind of means you've either got to be more disabled if you're at that kind of level or just ignore it all together which a lot of people kind of just fall through the gap there but I think there are sort of tests I think the levels that they're set at so we've talked about the mobility distance and stuff need changed but theoretically having a point scoring system and different levels of inability so it's like two points if you need a aid to do something a bit more if you need somebody to do it for you but they could do a fair assessment based on what's written if they actually applied it was but there seems to be another agenda that's using this system to kind of avoid considering other evidence whether it's medical whether it's from carers saying I do this for this person because they're not able to do it it just seems to be an act of tokenism again they're saying they've done a full assessment because look they've done all this stuff but actually it's just bypassing a lot of support for people thank you very much what do you think of that Lindsay your husband's had a stroke you've had all this help from the medical professionals who are supporting him and yet the process is de-medicalised if you like it has but they also ignored the reliability criteria we were saying like everybody with any sort of condition we'll be able to do this today but I will pay for it tomorrow the aids and adaptations that's really I mean to me someone who needs to manage medication by putting it in the big box with the days and times who has to set alerts on phones iPads who has to be prompted to do something that's an aid to take your medication now that should be two points my husband scored zero uses all these things it was in the form that we used it the form is ignored so really what we should have done was stop what you're doing let's go through the form page by page but you don't do that you go in there in control you sit where you're told to sit you speak when you are spoken to you know it's not something doing every day going into something like that so you're totally on the back foot and for people with any sort of condition it's the anxiety you're not I don't want to go in as a carer or guns blazing making a fuss because it's not going to help anybody but sometimes I'm sitting thinking to myself do you know what that's exactly what I should have done they should have remembered me because it's a room until they're dying day and I feel really guilty that I did not help in that room in that process but I was trusting coming back to your point about medical information I think it's important that there should be there available because it informs the whole process of assessment what's capable, what's not capable so why go back to your opinion about what the person can do and can't do in Anilson's case it would be very clear they've got rights ahead of weakness so why test it when it's been medically proven to be so same with a head injury it would say this is her problems she wouldn't have had a problem with a cognitive test all that upset so the medical evidence should inform the process not to diagnose if it doesn't matter but it's information on how it impinges on the day of life should be important Before coming to Claire I'm just going to abuse my position to go back to something that Moira said you made the point about this perception that the DLA was just automatically rejected at the first application in order to test the determination of the applicant to come back again but that's something I've heard before and I've heard it personally through a family experience but it goes back decades it's not something that's recent so can you give us an indication when did you first apply for DLA still at university so that would be halfway through so probably 90 something like that 1990-ish so yeah it's been a while going through this process we're talking about the reform of welfare but that's something that's clearly not being reformed in the decades intervening but I just wanted to clarify that because I think it's important to know that we've gone from this DLA situation to PIP but there are clearly problems with the DLA situation which don't appear to be being rectified by this transformation to the new system Claire Thanks, Llywydd a lot of my points have been covered can I just say I'm so pleased that you've come in today to put this on record and to give your evidence today my main concern coming from all of this is that you maybe want to comment is that the whole system is absolutely dehumanising and I think it was Mari had said that she thought she was made to feel as if she was just after an easy life and I think anyone that thinks that any of you has an easy life after today will be put right on that completely but I do have great concern about what you're expressing about how this made you feel Ms Sarnaught as well talked about our professional judgment as a health professional in her own area in this and your fundamental question for me is do you think any of this was necessary or do you think your medical practitioner should have the final say given the complexities of the conditions involved I think we are necessary in my case I'm still to go through the PIP which I expect to be turned down for but I don't see any point going through it I have an indefinite award they've done all the medical evidence everything's there why bother with the time, effort, expense of going through that again and then even if I get it it might be back to every year every two years going back and doing it all again and that just adds to all of our burden for trying to do everything else but it just seems so unnecessary I've been assessed many times nothing's going to change so why reassess me certainly my point I understand there are some more temporary awards but if anyone has an indefinite award and has fought to get to that point of having an indefinite award someone has made the judgment that it's unlikely to improve and the medical evidence will have been considered for that so why drag us all through it again seems pointless I would say that I'm worried because the things I feel I have the main problems with that are now we know not going to get better is the cognitive side of things my physical side of things is still improving bit by bit and to be honest on the points thing in the end it was the physical aspects of things that they focused on again and not the cognitive and I do kind of feel that I only got my award for like a year it finishes in October or something and I kind of feel that the problems I really have will still be there but the problems that they deemed I had may not be there so will I then not qualify anymore and that's a big worry and I also worry because I now feel that when I'm out and about because it was the physical aspect that they focused on I'm scared to walk properly or even get out of a car or I'm scared to go to the cinema with my kids or in case somebody thinks I've got it and I shouldn't have it but actually there's a whole lot of problems going on that has never been recognised and like that I mean I think if you have a permanent condition I don't really think it's fair or necessary money wise as well for it to be funded when I do the blue badge assessments if somebody has a chronic condition and they qualify the badge at the time that I'm doing that particular assessment I will always put on the forum that I don't think there was any need to reassign why, you know as in this is never going to improve it's only going to stay the same or get worse for the system for the PIP and the welfare would definitely be helpful for a lot of people and it would mean then that you're only assessing the ones that actually do need assessed, someone going for an operation gets better, so yeah they need to assessed again It feels like an exercise in jumping through hoops rather than anything else and I've got that ME I do hope to recover from it now, but it is a condition that people do recover from and I think if I was getting support to be able to do things to help it that probably that would help me to recover and then not need to climb again but having been through it three times twice with the LA and once with PIP I'm now at the point where I'm exhausted with it, it's not just that assessment or filling in the forum or going to the tribunal the whole 18 months that PIP application has been running it's made me fixate on every little thing I've had a problem with or every time I've overdone it and paid for it I think that would be good for remembering to mention it at appeal and it just makes it dominate your brain months I was sort of looking for the post to come and wondering if there was going to be a brown envelope with a decision in it and I've got a lot of support I'm quite lucky obviously working where I do I've got a lot of knowledge that I wouldn't otherwise have but for somebody that doesn't have that support and going through that I think it does just have a really big effect of making people not want to apply for it and I think that's probably part of the aim to discourage people to the point where they find a way to cope without it or convince themselves that they don't need it and they're not entitled to it so they just don't bother When I've got the letter saying get yourself to Done Firmill and I should have just taken it oh this is how we're going to play it then but you know we're still trochling on with this Thank you Thank you so much for sharing as much as you have this morning a convener asks us to focus on things that we can maybe pick up for the evidence and I've got a couple of things just from how you've spoken this morning one of the things is about time taken for assessment decisions and Mary you've been very very vivid and you're at your explanation of that what I would like to know is what impact of that on your household bills your ability to attend medical appointments or to attend therapies is there a huge impact waiting for that to come along to make these things a bit easier I've kind of got a bit of a time bomb I was very lucky to get my dad's old car when he replaced it and I can't afford to keep it on the road it's 14 years old that's what I've gotten about I have my blue badge I basically drive the distances I used to walk I've got a bus pass but the bus stops too far away to use it regularly so just had to do a load of work for the car MOT and had to go to my mum and dad and ask them to help out which I know not everybody's got a mum and dad who can do that things that might help for example I used to go to a health suite at my local swimming pool things like you saw and I helped with pain I just can't afford to do that now physiotherapy I was trying some sort of paste exercise to try and keep my health strength up which did help for a little while I can't afford to do that and because I'm not getting help around the house I did have somebody come in to help prepare vegetables for me which I can't afford to do so I'm having to use all my energy just to kind of get myself fit to go to work and do my job and come home so I don't have the energy to put into things like therapeutic activity I don't have the money to try alternative therapies or supplements that might help things out so it's kind of meant I'm stuck I think I would be able to kind of pull myself out of it a little bit better if I could sort of get all the support in place if I could focus my energy on the things that only I can do and get a bit of help I've got friends helping out things like walking my dogs I get a dog walker once a week when my friend can't do it but there is to the week it's a friend doing it for me and I can't even afford to take him out for lunch to say thanks for doing that I kind of want my friends to be my friends and everything has to rotate around my care needs so it would be nice to kind of have that taken care of and just enjoy their company rather than making demands of them all the time I know that you said your husband still technically in work but you'll be on half pay now so any length of time waiting for a decision will have a huge impact maybe on your ability well yes I did just get a gas bill and Scottish Gas wanted to put my payment up to quite a substantial amount because obviously he's been in the house 24x7 since this happened obviously because we were both working reasonably well paid jobs for the local authority I've been able to do all these complex financial things that apparently my husband can manage with a plomb so I have managed to move suppliers of things I have managed to get much better deals with various insurers I will be trying to renegotiate something with the bank and the mortgage but of course that's very interim and the PIP award helps you plan because you know that actually that will come in and then we can plan better so at the moment I'm firefighting we're not in any bother here but definitely firefighting I was a 7 my daughters at university and there's a lot of expense and you would choose to help your children out you know bank mum and dad at the moment I'm just firefighting doing what I can cutting costs here and there but how long can this go on I really don't know Maybe Alison you'll have some understanding of this and Mary's touched on it is that all of that the waiting for assessments waiting for decisions the anxiety and the stress that goes along with that has your medical rehab team mentioned talked about the impact that's having on your sustained recovery I think that they've been treating me a lot for the kind of stress and the anxiety and that a lot of that a lot of my rehab recently has been for all that things like getting a no, a refusal letter just kind of put me back you know a month and I had to kind of get myself back to the kind of point I was at before and then I would get another letter through and I'd be away back to what I was so it's been very hard to get myself out of that kind of load up plus the fact like I wasn't earning really anything I was on I was on the usual thing for a year I had a pay and then I had a half pay but thereafter I was on a year of unpaid leave from my NHS job and although I had them all in practice I was actually just paying people to run it not making anything at all so the pressure I felt because I could no longer contribute my wages were the things that the girls did so you know my husband's paid bills so the bills are still being paid and it's only been through like family members and things that my daughters have been able to continue with their activities which is important you know this accident has had a big impact on them and until I got my award they had been wanting me to go to like a gym programme which was fine but I had to pay for it like I've got to pay a gym membership to go to this rehab programme that they want me to go to so I'm now going and I'm actually feeling the benefit of it but that's because I don't feel guilty anymore because I've now got the award and I've got that money because I'm getting it I couldn't take that out of my budget for my girls because that's not fair but it's something for me and so that was really holding things up I think I don't feel I made as much physical progress for a year as I could have done it's been very hard Mora, you've painted very vividly on your evidence about how this situation can make you feel how does that have an impact on you just getting, did you say it takes sometimes a few hours in the morning to pull yourself together but if you're already feeling really low how much more difficult is that? It's always at the back of your head and I haven't hit it yet but every day it gets that little bit closer, the fear of what might happen if I get to the point that they turn me down from it even though I would appeal at that point and they stop and then within so many weeks they'll come and take the motability car away then what do I do? I've got no award, I've got no car how am I going to get to work the next day how long is my employer going to let that slide on before I don't have a job at which point well how long is it after that that I can't pay the mortgage and I can't put food on the table and that is always a worry at the back of your head in that intervening time so much of my life could have changed almost irreversibly that it's terrifying I mean I as I said I'm single, it's me I'm in my house, my dad lives with me am I going to make my elderly dad who survived cancer and looked after me am I going to make him homeless because I can't work because I can't get a car and it all rolls up and that might seem hugely dramatic but that's what's going through your head what are the potential implications of the fear of all of this I've just got a couple of other things one thing that struck me was about the actual assessment and the unnecessary parts of the assessment based on the individual now it seems to me the key thing missing out of personal independence payment is the personal part of it and the fact that your husband's been asked to take parts and bits of the assessment that wouldn't give an insight but other parts like medical records and all that are being ignored at any point did any of the assessors tell you what the qualifications were in whether they were trained in specific means of assessments I think it was yourself Alison says about inappropriate cognitive assessments I think it was yourself as well whether they should be done by a professional or not it strikes me as if maybe the level of training that the assessors have got is maybe something that we should look at and investigate I wonder if that's maybe your experience and did any of them actually tell you what their qualifications were okay My wife told me at my assessment but when I got the report it said he was a nurse I'd had an ESIS assessment in 2012 and that had been done by a nurse as well and she seemed to have a real understanding of any she was asking questions along the right lines she didn't do the physical assessment at all because she said you might be able to do it now but then you might not be able to do it another day so it's meaningless so there seems to be quite a lot left up to the individual on how they do it work and speak to people it seems the ones that have a good assessment get it and the ones that don't don't get it so definitely my experience the decision was basically written out by that nurse as well so whatever his medical background he's certainly not got a benefits background he definitely wasn't qualified to do something that somebody in the DWP just rubber stamped didn't look at anything else I mean that in Ellison's case the assessor said he was some form of qualification he gave I'm not sure what it was but he said that as he sat down before he had actually introduced himself or whatever it was a very brief almost in passing and didn't mean anything at all I didn't pick it up eventually what his actual qualification was but he tried to justify his assessment by qualification it was not part of something important for you Ellison never got it at all and that's the most important thing you should have known what his qualification was same sort of a thing for you Myra I haven't had the the final thing I've got to ask you all is at a time in your life when your husband has a stroke you have a long term condition and you have an accident you need to be able to trust a system to look after you would any of you say you trust it? No and I think that's one of the most important things that you have to have trust in a system Thanks, convener And finally Margaret Thank you, convener and thank you all very much for coming along here today and for being so frank with us this morning and lots of the questions that have been asked so I'll try and cover a couple of things that I think we haven't touched on and one of them being the mandatory reconciliation how difficult was that actually to go through did you immediately know that how do you find out about what happens next to mean you go if you're unhappy with the decision or either you're refused or you're not happy with the actual level of visibility that you've been acknowledged with so how available is that information? Three or four page decision letter and the date that you have your deadline doing the considerations buried somewhere on page three so most people would look what's the answer maybe look for some sort of justification of it but it's not something that jumps out at you I knew a bit more than most people would from having my friends at work but even then it was a last minute operation I had to phone in just to meet the deadline and then I wasn't allowed that time to submit that information so I didn't really get a mandatory reconsideration as such I got the letter which let me go on to appeal and again the deadline once you've had that for appealing is buried deep in a letter and there's supposed to be a process where it goes back to reconsideration if more information is submitted into a mandatory reconsideration it's supposed to go back there first before it goes on to appeal but that wasn't what happened in my case so the evidence hasn't really been looked at as a mandatory reconsideration just the ATOS report that was already there I only got information about that really through great find the charity that has helped us fill the form out in the first place when it came to writing the letter which of course as I've said we're still waiting they've had it since the 30th of March and we're still no further forward I actually used my background as of taking legislation and putting it into a form that mortals can understand I took all the legislation especially some of the statutory instruments and I wrote my letter based on the fact that I didn't believe that they had used the reliability criteria in any of the tests I completed the letter and the charity looked at it and went wow well done we submitted it and that was that but if I hadn't had that particular skill set obviously I would have relied on somebody creating the letter for me so the only reason I knew to do that was I had had help so as we've heard in earlier this morning it's so difficult for people who are applying to know exactly what is available to them and also the support agencies that are there you've got to know that they're there but it is quite difficult for you to actually find out one of the things when that gentleman who came along from the government to speak to us they did acknowledge that the decision letters would be looked at if I'm right so they are going to go there and look at these decision letters again so hopefully it will be more easily noticeable you see the decision and what action you can take to follow on from that so we'll wait and see if these decision letters are actually improved and they do meet the test the support agencies how difficult is it then to get in touch with them and do you find now because of everything that's happened with this welfare reform that it's more difficult for example you work with Citizens Advice to get an appointment with them because a couple of years back you would be able to pop into the Citizens Advice and see someone there and then where he's now I believe you can actually have to wait a week or even more depending where you are to get an appointment with the Citizens Advice and likewise the other agencies that you're dealing with Great Vine I think you mentioned and you've got other agencies that support you how difficult is it Obviously I had a sneaky backdoor route because some friends were the benefit advisors and they were doing it as friends rather than with their work hat on but I know I see people as a debt advisor who they've already got into the rent arrears and they didn't know that the CAB could help them with application or that the benefits were relevant to their situation so quite often I'll then refer somebody for a benefits check there's been quite a few projects funded at Perth CAB for benefit case work so there's been more help than there is a benefit check sometimes we're waiting a couple of weeks for an appointment for somebody even with all those extra staff and because I put form they sort of allow three hours for that and it might take a couple of goes even at that and sometimes it's done by home visits so usually people are asked when the deadline is and try and squeeze them in before their deadline but not everybody gets the form and then comes straight to the CAB sometimes people try and fill it in and it's only at the deadline and there's not a lot of time so then they would have to go and ask for another form there definitely isn't enough support to meet the need so many of the third sector agencies don't have the capacity they used to between various changes to the way they get their funding a lot of local authorities have had to make significant cuts to their third party grants and perhaps housing support contracts with these agencies so some of them are closing their doors some of them are coming out of particular areas when they lose the funding so I did have to wait to get my appointment and that was fine and I was really grateful to get it but I do know that so many agencies they're either gone or they don't have the capacity and that's cuts that's caused that the extra capacity at Perth it's been project funded rather than core funding so it could be next year that's all gone and we're back to the one or two people doing all the benefits case work In your experience the time taken to respond to your applications how often have the targets that they have they're supposed to respond within a certain time how often have they been met or not met in return because it is a week forever to get a response and you know additional stress that adds to everyone You send them a letter 17th of March it's not logged on their system till the 30th and I'm still waiting for a response to that letter the original PIP I mean I completely forgotten but we applied it was in December and I think it was the actual face to face assessment so I don't think they're meeting they may be meeting their targets but I don't think they're decent targets if that's a reasonable amount of time to wait sorry I'm just going to say I think I I waited from completing the actual form with the citizen adviser I think it was about seven months before I got my face to face interview and then it was this they kept to their timescales for the reconsideration in fact they were quicker as in they were early and again my rehab team said that'll be so that they didn't have any reports which they haven't received medical reports but then after that when I was then going to the tribunal you were talking that was another three months before I got a date for the tribunal so the whole process took more than a year to kind of from start to end because in that time obviously there's people get into financial difficulties as well as all the stress and what it does to their health conditions because I forget things it was really difficult for me to keep on like for me one week or five weeks feels the same do you know five weeks can go by in my house and I don't realise that we're on week five and I think we're on week one and just like that I'm not on top of chasing anything up it's very very difficult if I have to chase something up to keep on it so that's you know some of that is that I've forgotten to phone people but really that's not my fault I don't feel and particularly difficult with people who have mental health issues as well to keep on top of that I was quite aware of I have similar difficulties to Alison in terms of time blindness and sort of anxiety about phoning up when I did remember to do it so it took me until March or April to do it and then the assessment happened in April I don't know if that made any bearing or that was when it was going to happen from my form going in in August but there's sort of an awareness that they do measure things that aren't what they tell you part of your assessment so like walking to the assessment room and you think if I phone up is this going to go against me we're going to say no you are obviously on top of everything because you've phoned to chase us up it's really difficult for people who are claiming in these situations I suppose around the managing budgets and that kind of thing where how could they improve on these assessments that they're asking or should they just be tailored to meet individuals The old system actually wasn't bad not how it was executed but we used to be able to request an EMP doctor to come and do an assessment if you needed more evidence so I had that for one of my DLA applications where there wasn't so much medical evidence there I was fairly newly diagnosed there wasn't a lot documented about the actual difficulties I had and that particular doctor was the winner referred to in my submission gave me a lot of advice and wrote down what he told me but obviously I don't want that happening but in principle if there's a case where there's not a lot of evidence where there's a bit of a grey area then having that as an option to sort of build on the evidence can be helpful but to just put everybody through it when there's already enough evidence to make a decision like Moira said there's skeletons not going to go by itself if there's information there that's indisputable then somebody else looking at it and perhaps somebody else who's not so qualified they're only going to get a different answer by not looking at the right information sorry Alison did you want to I think about that you were asking about the budgeting things on the form I think it says complex budgeting decisions or something like that like for me taking whatever I was asked to take 75p away from a pound which I couldn't do in my head which I still can't do in my head and then to count back from 20 or something like that I had to do how did they come to a decision that I could make complex budgeting decisions from that something my children can do that better than I can do it now so where's the complexity my children helped me with my accounts and my bills because I don't understand it anymore but yet someone's come to the conclusion that I can make budgeting decisions myself on that one question that seems a bit strange that was the one that really got me my husband was asked to work out from five pounds but as I've told you I've had to do so much because obviously I'm trying to make savings to keep the wheels on the bram and there is no danger he could have for instance cancelled one television provider to another television provider and deal with all the nonsense that I ended up getting two contracts from the new television provider because they had made such a mess of swapping it over to then working out how much your house is worth plus all its contents because when you try to reinsure that's what you need to do and let's bear in mind as well we were told our house insurance was withdrawn and it was withdrawn because a certain bank that was bailed out by you and me decided they would no longer ensure listed buildings now it is an offence not to have buildings insurance if you live in a tenement so obviously I was right on that but trying to explain to people that you're in you live in a listed building no I don't live in a castle and trying to get the proper reinstatement value and cover your house so you meet your legal obligations it's actually very very difficult and very time consuming and certainly not something my husband could have taken on on the additional information many of you have had additional information from consultants and different reports you feel that that just wasn't taken into account at all by the assessors in some cases to not even acknowledge that it was there okay well thanks very much to you all for the information that you provided us with as you could tell we raised a number of issues that we're going to have to take up with those who can't conduct the assessments and that's the point of listening to you so the information you give us informs us, gives us areas for us to pursue and that's what we'll do now so the information you've provided today again, thank you very much on behalf of the committee for putting yourselves into the public eye in order to help more people because the more information we have the more people we can help and that's what we intend to do so I can assure you that we will continue to look at how the roll-out of PIP impacts on individual people but in the wider population in general because we have to get this right and at the moment it doesn't sound as though it's an experience that people want to have at a time when they need it the most and that's not acceptable so your contributions today have certainly helped us to take the issue forward so thank you very much for that I'll suspend the meeting for a period of time to be changed witnesses for our second panel second panel this morning is one individual who's come to give us information and assistance and that's Katie Ross who's the income maximisation adviser at Orkney CAB and do you have an opening statement to make Katie, we'll just go to that then and then we'll open up to the committee to ask questions if we're okay with that Okay so Orkney's advice to you is located in Kirkwall which is the largest town on the Orkney mainland many residents of the islands are too elderly or disabled to travel to our offices and to help we offer telephone appointments home visits and an outreach service to the outlying areas and islands for those clients who use public transport this can be by a bus or ferry timetables for these are restricted and those in more rural areas may not manage to walk the several miles to the bus stop most forage journeys are an hour to an hour and a half or so, somewhere longer if people have travelled to Kirkwall they often have to do so for the day which has both time and cost implications to the client due to time and travel constraints we often have to get clients to post us their PIP claim form in order for us to call a telephone appointment to help them complete the application we then post it back to them to approve and sign the requirement to make telephone calls before being sent the PIP paper form and packs on every workload as we often visit clients for other reasons identify that they may be eligible for PIP and then have to arrange a repeat visit to complete the application under the DLA claim system we were able to hold a stock of claim forms and take them with us on outreach and home visits we have asked if it was possible to hold a stock of paper claim forms for PIP as the DWP visit and officers do this request was declined we often cannot visit the client again for several weeks due to our workload and the travel time and we ask the telephony advisers to add a note to the case to ensure a client is not penalised for returning the claim form late the travel time to the outward islands also affects the healthcare professionals who visit the clients to assess their claim and this is an effect on the number of face-to-face assessments that can be undertaken in a day and increasing waiting times for other claimants since the reduction of PIP we have assisted 70 clients to claim PIP we currently have 32 active cases awaiting a decision notice and when the process first changed over we found that clients were waiting much longer than the recommended timescale for the claim to be fully assessed an example of this is a client we assisted with an initial telephone call on the day the benefit was launched that was the tentagin 2013 this telephone call was time-consuming and the adviser was put on hold for over 20 minutes before getting through to an operator after his PIP reform was submitted our client contacted our office a further 10 times to request assistance in following up his claim the case was eventually referred to our Member of Parliament Alastair Carmichael and yet it still took several months for this matter to be resolved his claim was not fully assessed and benefited in payment until the 2nd of May 2014 we found that there doesn't appear to be any order to the scheduling of face-to-face assessments with clients having their meeting with a healthcare professional before another client who submitted their claim often several months previous at present the longest outstanding claim we have on file for a client is from August 2014 we've previously raised with the DWP the issue of us submitting mandatory reconsiderations on behalf of our clients and us not being copied in on their response this causes additional work for us as we chase up the client and or the DWP to try and find out the result and this can potentially result in a late appeal this is particularly true for clients who have mental health issues and have difficulty dealing with forms and paperwork with regards to mandatory considerations please also note for the attack that should the client use a pill box for their medication they should be awarded at a minimum of one point we've recently had to submit this on two mandatory reconsiderations due to clients who have not been awarded this despite stating on the claim form that they do use a doset box unfortunately no tribunals have been undertaken in orderly for pet budgets our first hearing is due to be held on the 19th of May and we're unable to comment on the effect of the hearing locally the upcoming hearing is for a client who started the claim process in January 2014 their appeal was submitted late due to the client's impatient admission to Royal Cornhill hospital however it has still taken six months for the hearing to be scheduled due to a regularity of the panel visiting their island the additional time taken to assess the claim has not only caused extra stress and anxiety to the client who is receiving a lot of support and community mental health teams but also has financial implications due to the potential loss of income over this time period lastly, Pip is designed to help clients with additional costs due to their care and mobility needs such as increased heating bills extra transport costs due to limited mobility where a need to help for help in the home etc many of our clients have advised us that they've got themselves into financial difficulties whilst awaiting on a decision on the claim this has resulted in referrals to our money advisers for help with our debts and on occasion our end court advisory service for clients who may be behind with the rent and under threat of eviction we refer clients to the local food bank and have noted that the largest percentage of referrals for repeat packages are for clients who are in the process of claiming Pip whilst we accept that claimants who are awarded benefit have their payments backdated to the date they originally called for the claim form and they can use this to repeat any dates occurred this period of uncertainty along with increasing dates causes additional stress and anxiety for already vulnerable clients we would also like to highlight that whilst claimants receive a back date or for award, other linked benefits such as concessionary travel is not backdated as already mentioned travel can be costly for example a return bus journey can be up to £10 we also got some quotes from claimants one client had mentioned that I had taken some time to gather together reports for my specialist and GP for my face to face assessment when the healthcare professional arrived I tried to give them to her and she told me that she didn't need to see them and didn't even look at them I should be here all day if she did I was made to feel very stupid and like she wasn't interested in me but I was very nervous about my meeting as I'd recently had a bipolar episode I was feeling particularly on age when the healthcare professional visited I felt they acted very cool towards me and I didn't feel ease at all and lastly another client had mentioned that I was upset and crying during my assessment I wasn't offered time to compose myself or take a break I felt that I was being rushed and words were being put in my mouth I've also accompanied some clients to assessments I've attended seven along with the claimants that I've helped through the application form four different healthcare professionals attended those seven along with me and from my own observations there was only one healthcare professional that read back what the client had said and offered them the chit opportunity to change any of the details that they'd mentioned one healthcare professional arrived late and rushed the assessment I'd already helped them complete the paper claim form and I felt that some of the questions were rushed and they didn't try to obtain examples or further information from my client and there was only one healthcare professional that explained how the client can give feedback on the claim process and if they had any complaints or any comments to make how they could do that Thank you Thank you very much, Katie That's given us some food for thought Just an initial question for myself I know that CABs talk to one another and we've heard the evidence of this committee about the different problems being faced between CABs in rural areas and comparison to CABs in urban areas Doesn't lessen the problems that are just different problems I'm just wondering if your discussions with your colleagues in other parts of the country whether the problems you're experiencing are exclusive to your island communities or are they just a greater degree of problem in comparison to others or just what's the comparison between you and other CABs basically We generally would speak to I suppose we're neighbours for one more different word so it would be the Shetland Citizens Advice Bureau and the Caithness one as well On occasion we may speak to some of the more tably more populated places so that would be Aberdeen in places but certainly in every part of the country it's quite common that there's delays such as this and the issues that we're experiencing and their experience in the other island communities in Caithness and Sutherland And these face-to-face assessments just how important are they and do you think that they're valuable beyond just the application? For some of the ones that I've gone to I think they have been important not always I don't feel I sometimes feel that for instance the client I'm taking to travelling in a couple of weeks they've been admitted to a mental health facility several times through Cornhill Hospital they've got the support network there and from reading the tribunal papers there's been no additional input from her GP there's no been a request from her social worker and I feel their input would be just as valuable to having done an assessment with her or for her coming along to the tribunal OK Barnabelle Katie, hello, good afternoon I was struck by a couple of things in your submission in particular that you asked if you could hold a stock of claim forms as you used to do with DLA but that was declined Do you think that this scheme in the roll out because it's very different to what has happened before Do you think DWP has got a strategy for island and remotor communities? No It certainly doesn't feel like that and it's something that we find and I'm sharing your own jobs you'll come across how living in Scotland things are different in different parts of the country but it does feel very much as if it's just been one size fits all as we said some clients can't cope with the initial telephone call and if they can't get in to see us that means that we have to travel out to see them we generally will book a setting in appointment for two weeks time or three weeks time to allow to help complete the claim form with them but it does impact on every waiting list for us if we could go out and have the form with us especially to some of the more remote islands that can make a big difference and it streamlines it a little bit for people as well as if they're struggling to cope One aspect of the system one is the system for the initial interview with the applicant and the other is if it goes to appeal panel taking first of all the system for interview on the islands I mean how many healthcare professionals are there in Orkney to deal with the main island in the surrounding islands so it's visiting healthcare professionals that come up they can't carry out all the assessments via home visit so that'll impact on the main land to the islands and how often are they coming Katie they've been coming up a bit more frequently lately it was the last quarter of last year was the first time that they'd visited us the last round of assessments that they do, they generally come up for a week at a time our clients just get a letter to say that the assessment will be between say 9 and 11 so they don't have a definite time for when it's going to take place either so they're waiting in all day they're getting more and more anxious about this danger that's coming into their house and what's going to happen but the last round when they came up there was two that came up but I only know that cos I had two clients that morning and I was sitting in their assessment and I said oh I think I'm coming to the next one with you but she'd mentioned that there was someone else up and one of the appeals to which you referred you said it took I think six months for an appeal panel to be constituted so that's the one that we have on the 19th we've submitted the technical it's the SSC one form is the form that you submit to the courts and tribunal service to request the tribunal and that was submitted in November last year and it's 19th of May before the hearing and final question convener we were listening to some earlier evidence Katie is suggesting that there may be a degree of inflexibility about the criteria and how people try to respond to the criteria as designated and you've listed experiences that you had with clients three experiences I mean in an ideal world would you expect the form to be the basis of information to the healthcare professional and then expect the healthcare professional during the interview to flesh out what's on the form because I was looking for example convener and I didn't realise this but the DWP should take into account the fact that the effort of completing an activity can adversely affect your ability to repeat it or to undertake other activities which is something we were covering in earlier evidence with the witnesses when we saw the form it's not very clear how you make that known to the HCP then we'll try and flesh out the forms as much as we can put in examples for clients when we help them fill in the form because as you say they may be able to make a meal but can they do it safely and repeatedly are they likely as one of the ladies said this morning actually have pans on the stove and is there a risk of fire that kind of thing so we do try and get as much information for that as we can when we're doing the forms but unfortunately the base filling where the cat helped everyone fill in the forms not everyone used to come to us It then means Katie that the interview is critical it means that the interview really ought to be the clarification point for what does the form actually mean in practice for the applicant I would certainly say from sitting in on the assessments I get the impression that the person that's come up has seen the form so they know who they're going out to see they would imagine getting sent a pack that would have everything in it but they tend to rather than refer to what's already been answered I've not yet heard one health care professional do that in the seven that I've sat in on they'll just it's as if they've started the same questions in the same order but it's as if they're asking it for the first time the disconnect between what the applicant did with the form and what the interview and quite often our clients are waiting and in most cases they're waiting a minimum of six months and they could have a variable condition but the day that they've filled it in with me has that changed come the reassessment Thank you very much You said that the DLE claim system allowed you to have a stock of claim forms and my colleague asked that question what was the reason given as to why you weren't allowed to have pip forms? I believe it's because they've said that it's under ATOS and it was ATOS that was designing it and also just because they're trying to streamline the payment was the other reason It's a forum So did you think that was a satisfactory No and we did try and push them all now but we didn't really get anywhere unfortunate then and it would certainly help the claim system if you did have those and you saved time for yourselves and people who are claiming Thank you My first question is on the pill box point which is probably one of the most simplistic things and yet it seems that in terms of some of the mandatory reconsiderations that you've done that that point hasn't been awarded despite it being stated How do you think they can get that wrong? I don't know Obviously if we're looking to reconsider a decision it's not very often that that's the only thing that's going to get that there might be other reasons but it's it's only been recently that it started to be flagged up so I'm only really speculating but it could be that maybe they've gone a bit lax with it or they've just taken that for granted The thing is if they're getting that bit wrong which is probably one of the most simple ones to assess it's either yes, folk are or no, they're not it's on the forum, if they're getting that bit wrong is it not likely that there may be getting some other bits a bit skewed with as well I'd like to look at the case that you talked about with the tribunal which is due to take place in the 19th of this month and you've stated that it's six months since that application first went in for the tribunal and in the evidence you say that the client has had inpatient admission to Royal Cornhill Hospital which is actually in my own patch so I'm aware of the work that Cornhill does Do you think that it's right that somebody that's had inpatient admission to Royal Cornhill has to face a tribunal? No That client as well and I can see in the few times that I meet with them a lot of the time it's been through their support network they've given authority for them because it just can't cope with situation can't cope with day to day a lot of the time to be honest with you and then having this also it's definitely causing additional stress is the same and I'm not exactly trained but I can have that client sitting in front of me and know that there is difficulties there and as I've seen from looking at their papers so there's not been any request for additional information at all that client when they had their assessment at the house her CPA and had actually visited her till administer some medications during that appointment CPA unfortunately couldn't stay but she had mentioned that it's not coping with this assessment but they still carried on through with and the client just found the whole experience just incredibly difficult The assessment itself having a huge adverse impact on somebody who obviously has some severe mental health problems and the tribunal situation itself may well lead to some additional difficulties after that Do you think that in scenarios like that that medical advice should be sought and that some common sense some logic should come into play and that folks should realise that they might be doing more harm than good in terms of dealing with folks in this manner I would say so she has requested that her CPA and her companies us both to the tribunal as well I have my concerns about the client but she can only set for so long and then she has to just leave she does it with me because she can't cope with what's happening around her and we'll just say oh that's enough I have to go so hopefully by having the CPA there they may allow her to speak on behalf of the client but again they try and get as much information from the individual themselves before allowing anyone else to comment on for them Thank you very much, Katie Christiana, you wanted to talk something about that On a colleague's point there and fortuitously this morning the third forced news they always send us the newspaper have reported on a story about the department of working pensions being forced to disclose whether there's been campaigners believe that people have died during the process for different reasons one of them is suicide and I just wonder if it's a story that you recognise that not sending us through any of work claim I wouldn't say that they've gone ahead and have taken their own lives but with that client we've just been discussing the most recent admission to Cornhill hospital was in about the same time as the decline of benefit it's not to say that I've made my health food in a bad place anyway but it does put additional pressure on people at a time when they're quite vulnerable already we have had raised queries as well so we've not come across it ourselves but if we're waiting six months plus for people to be awarded their benefit if you're undergoing cancer treatment and you're coming towards any of your treatment you may not have been assessed before but you've finished that and that's when you're needing the addition normally but what happens then until you get assessed from when you first applied or is it from that day we weren't able to get a clear response from that from the DWP okay thank you thank you thank you Katie I just wanted you to back up on one of the points you made about the debt that PIP was backdated to the date of application is that with interest no but presumably any debt has been occurred to have interest on them from most of the clients too so it's amounting problem from up to six months as you say that could be considerable once can you give us an idea of what other passported benefits PIP would give that aren't additionally paid to in that timescale but if they aren't working and they're claiming PIP they'll be on employment support allowance if they're awarded PIP and they live alone and they get the daily living component which is essentially the care side of things they'll get an additional allowance on their employment support allowance because there's a recognition that living alone they may need to get someone to come in and help them that won't get paid whilst they're waiting for their decision again that should be backdated but it's not happening in every sense we've had to help some clients some clients as well will just see it as because they're getting six months plus we're talking several thousand pounds so they'll just think oh I've got everything that I'm entitled to I'm not querying it forever so we do try and make sure that we're doing benefit checks for people it can also give them additional reduction to their council tax depending on their household circumstances and if a client's not aware that those are there as you said they can just completely miss that they're out of pocket in that whole time school where that delays in place thank you thank you we've been told in previous evidence that the DWP have changed their practices when it comes to terminal illness as a result of being lobbied by people like Macmillan and and understand as well that people with not just cancer and MND were affected I just wonder given your submission to do with delays has it improved for people with terminal illness in the Orkney Islands or are you still suffering difficulties there because of your geographical challenges? If a client is diagnosed with having a terminal cancer diagnosis which is that they're expected to live less than six months then when they initially call to start the PIPCLEAN process they do ask you know do you need to make us aware of this and quite often their doctor will give them a form as well a DS1500 and that's informing them that they've got a terminal diagnosis we've not come across too many terminal diagnosis but we have had cancer diagnosis and they'll just be filtered into the system as would someone with mobility open anyway right I also wanted to address in the second last paragraph of your submission you talk about one particular client who has had to contact the office a further 10 times to request assistance what was his experience of those 10 calls? That client is to say we've now managed people's expectations of that but it was new for us all when the PIPCLEAN was introduced but obviously he wasn't hearing anything, he wasn't getting any letters and needed support to try and phone and chase up his claims so that's where he was contacting us it was also meaning that quite often it wasn't even able to get an appointment with us because quite often we would need him with us to do the phone call to give authority for us to act on his behalf so it was very much kind of additional stress again I know I keep saying that but it was very stress for the whole thing for him and very anxiety through the not knowing of what's happening as well and you also say in that case that you eventually referred to your MP yes it still took several months for it to be resolved do you think the MP made any difference the involvement of the MP? I can do, we try not to phone up and use the MP line too much just that we're aware of the workload that everyone has and that it's clients that are waiting as long as what the one had done that we would do it so it can help by getting the MP's office on board but with that client it just felt like the whole introduction to PIP also had been anticipated, it felt once it came in that no one really knew what was happening with it within ATOS, within the DWP and for Alexa, for ourselves and for our MP's office and clients to try and work with that system when it was so available on to the letter from the MP they did eventually yes but they still it was trying to push through to get the face to face assessment that calls the delays on that one okay thanks very much okay one final short thank you for that Katie I don't want to discuss the specific appeal to which you refer to in your submission but if you were requested by a client to assist and the client has significant mental health issues sufficiently significant that there could be genuine doubts about the ability of the client to have capacity to represent him or herself at the hearing is there a case for intervention by the medical profession in that event? Not that we're aware of we can make special requests to the panel and this client that we're dealing with we have already contacted the tribunal service to just explain the situation they've asked that she comes along on the day but then the judge can then at the hearing if necessary can allow us I've had clients previously that if they haven't been able to attend they've asked myself questions instead this is for employment support all I want but the worry with that is that you know for me to talk on their behalf doesn't always get things across as much as what the client can because only they can express how they feel fully themselves and likewise that's why we're hoping that the CPN's evidence would be taken into account on the day as opposed to the client for that one Right Thank you Well thank you very much Katie again that's added to knowledge and information this morning which is really beneficial if there's anything else that you think when you go back that you think the committee could use by way of information police contact as we move forward as we see things developing to be updated on your experiences would be beneficial to us so feel free to keep in touch with us and inform us as things move forward and we'll try and use that information as best we can but thanks very much for coming all that way and helping us out this morning Thank you I'll suspend again for a minute or two well Agenda item 2 is our second item of business and it's on women and welfare debate the committee has agreed to undertake an inquiry as we all know into the impact of welfare reform on women and it's expected that the committee will report on its findings in June or July so the option is available to us if we wish to bid for a debate slot in the chamber in order to debate our findings and we just need agreement from the committee to pursue a slot in the business schedule to discuss our report probably from September onwards committee agreed with that Agenda item 3 the annual report the annual report is for the period 11 May 2014 to 10 May 2015 Members will know that the format and length of the committee's annual report is a standardised document but we are entitled to comment on it or discuss it but it's pretty standard so if anybody's got any observations or points that they want to raise Annabelle? I'm aware that my predecessor and the committee I think dissented from one of the reports and perhaps had dissenting comments in relation to another report would it simply be appropriate to refer to that in the report to observe that those were not unanimous reports it would merely reflect the position expressed by my colleagues I think that would just continue with the process that was established by Alex so if you're happy to do that Annabelle then that can be taken out I guess put as a fruit note Thank you very much and everyone else happy with that I'll bring the meeting to a close by pointing out that our next meeting will be our first oral evidence session as part of the Women and Welfare Inquiry and we'll also take further evidence on the mitigation of the bedroom tax I'll close the meeting at that Thank you