ESA assessments

General Support
1

Sorry if this is considered off topic, but I’m guessing that many of us with PsA in the UK have to deal with the dreaded ESA assessment. For those not in the know, this is where someone who has only just met us decides whether we are fit for work or not.

Now, the fun starts with the form, which is intended to find out what kind of restraints we have on our work capability. We get asked how far we can walk, and then we get asked how long we can stand. Relatively sensible questions, I guess. Then we are asked if we can lift an empty cardboard box, get up from one seat and move to the next one, make a mark with a pen, lift a carton of milk, and put our hands in the air. Now, I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t know a single job I could do by being able to do those tasks. It sounds more like a game of Simon Says.

And, like the PIP (Personal Independence Payment) form, the all important questions are not asked at all. No-one asks how you manage to shop. Or can you get in an out of a car. Or what happens if you walk a little bit one day - can you do it again the next? Do you have to sit with your feet up, and if you don’t do you feet swell up so that they look like they belong to a Yeti, albeit less hairy. Or even, and sorry for the crudeness, but how much it hurts your wrists when you wipe your backside. And I can’t be the only one who has THAT problem! These are surely more important than if you can lift a bloody cardboard box!

Anyway, we send the form back, and then have to await a face to face assessment - where we are asked all the same damned questions again! Anyway, my moan here is because I had an appt for the assessment today and, guess what happens, they didn’t get the message about me needing a ground floor room because I can’t manage stairs. Not only were they told this on the phone by me, it should be pretty obvious from the 20 page form I had to fill in to start with! So, all the build-up today, all of that preparing myself to be polite to someone asking me stupid questions for an hour, all the hassle of having to get properly dressed as I was leaving the flat, for nothing, and I have to do it again in a month’s time instead when I have a rescheduled appt. That said, perhaps I had a lucky escape - the woman I spoke to in the waiting room who was due for an appt was due to be seen at 1.30pm. It was then 3.20 and they still hadn’t got to her! When I go next time, I’ll take a sleeping bag, just in case…

2

(I’m Dutch so don’t know exactly how it’s in England but from what you’ve said not too much different then what I experienced) I was told I could be a car saleswoman so I couldn’t get any money… No matter that I couldn’t sell water to someone who’s thirsty… (I could do way more back then though but people told me to go see what happened)

It’s extremely frustrating! It feels like they do it to see if you can actually go up the stairs… weird that they don’t have an elevator in a building they use to asses if you are disabled… (I just remembered my journey to the place which was like 2 hours by train and bus and from the train to the bus were huge stairs…

Watch out with looking too smart for them though… if you can properly dress yourself one morning for a meeting that means this much to you… you can obviously do it every single morning…

I was asked if I could move a 1kg box though not a cardboard one haha but at least in the meeting you’ll be able to tell them you can do it (if you can) but it would mean you wouldn’t be able to do anything else that day… like wipe your but :wink: (I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that if the pain in my hands gets worse…)

3

Yes, they wanted me to go miles to my assessment too, but I said a firm “no.” With the bipolar alone that would have been traumatic, let alone with the arthritis as well. I haven’t even been out of my home town since I got the PsA anyway. I’m still not sure how I would negotiate doing that as I don’t have a partner to help me with things and I don’t drive.

As for dressing, I can barely do that anyway - the supports we have for our ankles! Who designed them? They’re about three inches across to start with, and with arthritis in our hands we have to pull them open and heave them on! And my shirt is now permanently half-open as I can’t reach the top button. I feel like I should stick on a fake hairy chest and hang a medallion around my neck! I was a cafe in a dept store on Saturday and someone in there actually came over and asked me to do my buttons up as she could see my chest when I leaned forward to eat my dinner! I confess that my response was to tell her that I could see far more of her front thanks to her low cut dress than she could see of mine, and that she should…f…go away. My temper gets worse by the day, as do my outbursts that go with it. It’s a lack of self-discipline, but I blame it on the PsA. I call it a “co-morbidity!”

The problem with being honest in these assessments though, is that they are not honest in return. If I told them I could move a box one day, and not the next, they would probably just tick “yes!” Even my GP told me to “embellish everything” when I went. The bizarre thing is that I could actually do some work. My work would normally be teaching at a university, and I could do that for a few hours a week, and the money is such that I would only have to do about half a dozen hours a week to get what money I get on ESA. And I COULD do that. But the problem is that it would be three month contracts in the first instance, normally with a month or two inbetween each one. And this means that each time I finished a contract I would have to go through this whole rigmarole of re-applying etc. We are allowed to earn around £120 a week without even signing off ESA, but that would amount to one hour of teaching a week when you factor in payment for preparation, marking, office hours etc. Considering most seminars are two hours, that means it would involve literally starting the application for ESA from scratch every three months, and I really don’t have the willpower for that. I’d do the teaching for free if they’d let me, but sadly universities don’t work that way!!

4

It’s a real shame you’re not teaching if that’s something you’d like to be doing, I understand the practical issues but it’s a pity. Are there any other roles that would be a better fit at the moment … tutoring perhaps? Can’t help thinking there must be something out there for you.

The forms and interviews are Kafkaesque. Nobody uses that word anymore which is ironic because it applies perfectly to more and more procedures and processes. Just wondering, do you get help with the forms? It sounds as if you have some support there, but if not, Citizens Advice can be excellent. Completing them in the right way has less to do with intelligence and more to do with familiarity and CAB often has volunteers who can give first rate support with ESA and PIP applications etc.

5

And now I’m singing “It’s not unusual…”

1 Like
6

Well, I had the medical assessment for ESA on Friday. It lasted over an hour and a half - I haven’t heard of anyone else’s lasting that long. Now I’m worried they’re going to assume I can sit at a desk for that long on a regular basis for work as I sat there for 90 minutes on Friday, although I did have to keep stretching my legs, and my feet were like balloons when I got home after having them down all day.

It’s all a rather demeaning experience. I did rather feel like telling him “look, it took me 9 years to do my BA, MA and PhD, do you really think I did it all that so as not to put it to use afterwards?” But I bit my tongue for the most part - except for when he asked me how I speak to people when I am out in a mobility scooter. “With my mouth,” came my reply! And then he wanted to see how far I could move my knees, elbows, ankles etc. I don’t mind doing that for the rheumy, but not there. And considering he’s meant to be a “health professional” I was rather taken aback when he said “I’ve never met a Dr before” when he saw I had it before my name!

It’s all very well them asking us what we CAN do, but they avoid the question of what you can do without it hurting. Can I walk 50 metres? Yes, I can, but every single step hurts! But if I stopped doing everything because it hurts, I’d never get out of bed!

Then to round the weekend off (and this is totally unrelated), I hobbled down to the shop today and there was a homeless guy around the side of it. I live in the city centre and so see lots of them. I rarely give them money, but sometimes do buy them food, which is more likely to do them more good. So, I went into M&S, the nearest shop to my house(!) and bought the couple of things I needed, as well as two lots of sandwiches, some crisps, biscuits, chocolate, cold drink and a hot tea for the homeless guy. I came out of the shop only to find that, during the ten minutes, I had been away, he had been attacked by three guys who had beaten him with metal bars. Some people were helping him, but there was blood everywhere, and the ambulance and police had been called. I was gutted. I left the food and drink with one of those helping him (I couldn’t do anything more than they were) and later learned he was taken to hospital. but I couldn’t believe it. Broad daylight in the heart of the shopping centre.

A great weekend all round.

7

Fingers crossed for the outcome of your ESA assessment. The fact that it took so long sounds fairly promising but it’s hard to tell I guess.

I’ve experienced something similar with a homeless guy, not quite as awful as what happened to that poor man, that’s just so shocking. A few years back a bunch of teenagers surrounded a homeless guy (also in broad daylight in a busy town centre), threatening to stab him, he got away but I don’t know if he found safety.

8

Good grief. That’s horrible.

Sorry your appointment was such a drag.

9

And now I have an eye twitch. Can’t believe people can treat those less fortunate that way (despite overwhelming evidence I’ve been provided with over the years).

I’m hoping that you hear back in the positive from your assessment, but, I’ll be honest, that entire process seems like a half assed pain in the ass. Doesn’t seem like they’ve actually put much thought into what they’re doing from your description.

10

I should hear back in a week or two. As for the homeless guy, all I have learned since is that he was taken to hospital and was described in the local papers as “seriously injured.” Sadly, without knowing his name, I can’t find out anything else, and obviously I don’t know him either. There is a charity here that feeds the homeless of the city twice a week, and I’ve asked them to let me know if they hear anything through the grapevine or, indeed, see him one night. Perhaps there can be the hope that, somehow, through all this he’s ended up in a shelter instead of on the streets now. My fingers are crossed for him.