PIP Assessments Now Being Audio Recorded

This appears to be good news for claimants with regards to ATOS, but not so with regards to Capita.

The recommendation for people to make their own covet recording is also sound advice for it will also be evidence if the recording do not match.

Referring to Capita, surely the DWP should make this part of the contract and if, Capita do not comply then they should be removed as authorised agents.

The more that can be done to make the process more transparent the better.

What would be even better is to cancel all the contracts with Atos and Capita and any other outside agencies as soon as possible, then we would only have to contend with the DWP, which alone is more than enough.

The whole benefit processes need to be more user friendly and based on a person-centred approach, rather than a system approach.

Same Difference

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

 

IAS (Atos) have begun recording telephone assessments for personal independence payment (PIP) Therese Coffey, secretary of state for work and pensions, told the Work and Pensions Committee on Wednesday 30 September.

Coffey told the committee that IAS had begun recording the assessments on 21 September

“But that has not yet started with Capita. That is under, I can assure you, active management to get Capita going quickly on this”

This means that claimants can now ask for a copy of the audio recording of their assessment if they wish to challenge the decision or if they simply want to have a copy for their own records.

We’ll be updating the PIP guide later this week and the latest version will include a simple Subject Access Request you can send to request a copy of the audio recording.

We don’t know when…

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Tories hand private firms £95 BILLION in public service contracts : Welfare Weekly

A year on from Carillion’s collapse GMB, Britain’s general union, has revealed the total value of outsourcing contracts let by the public sector rocketed by 53% in the past year.

In 2017/18 the lifetime value of public sector contracts awarded to private companies rose to £95 billion, up from £62 billion the year before.

Capita was one of the biggest winners of public outsourcing, receiving contracts worth almost £1.4 billion in 2017/18 – despite issuing a profit warning in the same year.

The private firm, who were given responsibility to carry out disability assessments for Personal Independence Payments (PIP), have been criticised by MPs over the accuracy of reports sent to the Department for Work and Pensions.

 

Source: Tories hand private firms £95 BILLION in public service contracts : Welfare Weekly

Atos threatens to call police after claimant questions PIP assessor’s mental health training | Govt Newspeak

Staff working for a discredited benefit assessments contractor threatened to call the police after a claimant asked about the mental health qualifications of the nurse who was assessing his eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP).

Atos has now launched an investigation into what happened at the assessment centre in Leeds, which saw the nurse abandon Kris Weston’s assessment after just a couple of minutes.

She did not realise that Weston, a composer and trained sound engineer, had been recording the assessment.

Weston began the assessment last month by telling the nurse that he had stayed up all night because of the extreme anxiety he experiences when he has to deal with institutions.

He had spent three days putting together a 10-page description of his complex mental health problems – and what he says is the “continual failure to even listen to his problems by multiple institutions” – in the hope that the assessor would help him secure the financial and health support he needed.

He explained that he had been unfairly described in the past as “violent” by the NHS after a telephone argument, although she told him that Atos had no record of this.

She appears to have wrongly blamed the decision to refuse him a home assessment on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), when such decisions are taken by the assessment companies, Atos and Capita.

 

Source: Atos threatens to call police after claimant questions PIP assessor’s mental health training   | Govt Newspeak

Proof the DWP intentionally misleads Personal Independence Payment applicants : universalcreditsuffer.com

Following my journey through the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) application process and first stage of appeal, I can show how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are intentionally misleading applicants. The way they are operating is leading to disabled people losing out purely on how things are worded.

 

Source: Proof the DWP intentionally misleads Personal Independence Payment applicants : universalcreditsuffer.com

Atos assessor told gay man he was ‘defective’ and needed to be cured by God

One more mark against ATOS and their assessors, how many more will it take for the DWP to admit the assessments and assessors are ‘not fit for purpose’.

ATOS is ignoring DWP guidelines – again | Govt Newspeak

We have just written another letter of complaint to ATOS (or Independent Assessment Services, as they are now called), who have again ignored DWP guidelines about the role of companions accompanying people to their PIP assessment. Let’s hope they respond as quickly as they did last time. Here is our letter:

Dear Sir/Madam

We write again with a serious complaint about your assessment centre at Gemini Crescent, Dundee. Last Thursday (17^th May) one of our volunteers accompanied a man to his assessment. The person being assessed has serious brain damage and had asked our volunteer to help him make sure that he fully answered the questions, and that all the difficulties he needed to raise were covered. This is something we have helped with many times before, in line with the DWP guidelines reproduced below. However, on this occasion the assessors told our volunteer that he could not…

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Source: ATOS is ignoring DWP guidelines – again | Govt Newspeak

Almost a third of PIP disability assessments are ‘not up to scratch’ | DisabledGo News and Blog

Almost a third of assessments for the PIP disability benefit are not fully up to scratch, figures reveal.

The data shows the shocking full story behind the official figure that 95% of reports are “acceptable”.

Atos and Capita have a target for 3% or fewer of their reports to be ranked “unacceptable” – and currently it is around 5%.

But figures handed to MPs show thousands more “acceptable” reports still had to be amended or prompted staff feedback.

Atos, for example, said 5% of its reports were “unacceptable” between March and December 2017.

But a further 10% were “acceptable with amendments”, and 15% were “acceptable with feedback” – meaning there was “learning required” for the assessor.

That left just 70% of Atos reports that were graded acceptable without any changes or feedback.

In the same period, Capita said just 6% of its reports were unacceptable. But a further 15% were acceptable with amendments and 13% had learning required.

That meant 66% of Capita reports were graded acceptable without any amendments or feedback.

An Atos spokesman stressed that “acceptable with amendments” still meant a report was acceptable.

 

Source: Almost a third of PIP disability assessments are ‘not up to scratch’ | DisabledGo News and Blog

PIP/ESA tests ‘trigger lack of trust in system’ [You Think]

Hated Government welfare tests have unleashed a “pervasive lack of trust” in the system, MPs warn today. Contracting out assessments for Personal Independence Payments and Employment and Support Allowance fuelled victims’ agony, the Commons Work and Pensions Committee reveals.

In a 71-page report, it calls on ministers to scrap the current arrangements and take tests back in house. Chairman Frank Field said: “For the majority of claimants the assessments work adequately, but a pervasive lack of trust is undermining its entire operation. “In turn, this is translating into untenable human costs to claimants and financial costs to the public purse. No one should have any doubt the process needs urgent change.”

Since 2013, 290,000 rejected claims for Personal Independence Payments or Employment and Support Allowance have been granted on appeal – 6% of all those assessed.

 

Source: PIP/ESA tests ‘trigger lack of trust in system’ [You Think]

The PIP Files: Nearly one in three Capita assessments were flawed, reports reveal | DisabledGo News and Blog

Nearly one in three of the disability benefit assessment reports completed by a private sector contractor were significantly flawed, confidential Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) documents suggest.

The figures were revealed through a government audit of personal independence payment (PIP) assessment reports that had been written by staff working for under-fire outsourcing giant Capita in 2016.

The audit, which examined more than 4,000 of the 190,000 assessment reports completed by Capita from April to December 2016, found that about 7.5 per cent of them were so poor as to be deemed “unacceptable”.

But with another 14 per cent of assessments, DWP concluded that the report was so flawed that there was “learning required” by the healthcare professional who wrote it, although the report was of an “acceptable” standard.

And in a further 12 per cent of cases, the report needed to be amended because of even more serious flaws in the assessor’s report, although again the report was still said to be of an “acceptable” standard.

In all, nearly 33 per cent of the Capita reports audited during 2016 were found to be of an unacceptable standard, to need changes, or demonstrated that the assessor had failed to carry out their role properly.

If the findings of the audit – which examined just over two per cent of all reports – were applied to all 190,000 of the assessments completed by Capita in that eight-month period, more than 14,000* PIP claimants could have had their claim decided on the basis of a report that was of an unacceptable standard.

And more than 62,000* could have been based on a report that was of an unacceptable

 

Source: The PIP Files: Nearly one in three Capita assessments were flawed, reports reveal | DisabledGo News and Blog