Well, thanks to an admin error, I now have to go through the ESA disability benefits system reassessment a year early. Yay! Lucky me! They have curiously no record of the letter sent to me in June 2017 (which I can’t find - I have every other one!) saying that I wouldn’t be reassessed until June 2020. Their system says 2019, so I get the lovely experience early.
And no, the form hasn’t changed. My ability to work is still determined by questions asking if I can make an X with a pen, lift an empty cardboard box, and move a pint of milk from one surface to another. I would suggest that, with severe arthritis, if you were actually hoping to return to work, it wouldn’t be one of physical labour or making tea. But clearly common sense doesn’t rule at the DWP.
But there are no questions at all about how exhausted you get if you leave the house for a couple of hours, or how much pain you would be in the next day if you do the same, or how your ridiculously low immune system caused by meds might affect your reliability at work in the first place. Or - how about this for a novel idea - why don’t they write to my doctor and ask HIM whether I’m fit for work or not! Luckily I have an appointment tomorrow and will ask him for a letter - I got one for the appeal last time and it seemed to sort things out.
But I do have here the medical report from last time, and the amount of lies written by the assessor is mindboggling. I can understand to a certain degree him writing “patient says he can’t do X, but I think he can.” But he actually made up things I apparently said.
I walk around my garden - I lived in a fourth floor flat at the time. What was I doing - strolling around the window box?
I buy and manage 4 pint bottles of milk - I never buy 4 pints of milk.
Can sit for long periods of time but patient says he’s a “bit stiff” afterwards. A bit stiff? I need to go on a rack to straighten out!
No problem managing finances with the bipolar - I went bankrupt owing enough to buy a small house!
Patient shows no sign of violent or aggressive behaviour…just you wait if you put lies down again, Mr!!!
I can relate. It seems the requirement for the job is just to put off paying money to people who need it. Never mind they fact that they took money out of your check for this… I am working towards getting a hearing on my end and from what I have seen and experienced so far I am not surprised. I am with you on this it is a total bunch of crap that the main part of the job is to blanket stamp denials…I am not holding out hope they do they right thing in my case so I started with a lawyer and will end with one. I have worked with state agencies and seen how they work so I am not totally surprised at the ineptitude.
I’m feeling for you. Heard so, so, so many stories like yours. Both the lies (which simply is a national disgrace) and indeed now the early reassessment. I think the entities employed by the government to do this have effed it up just royally.
The system is broken, on purpose in my opinion. For heaven’s sake, ‘move a pint of milk from one surface to another’! I’m so addicted to tea I could do that if I was in a coma.
Like I said last time, CAB can really shine in this area if you need any support with the form.
Perhaps you should look up the legislation for recording conversations in case you need to refute the next report. In some jurisdictions, as long as a person is a party to the conversation, they have the legal right to record it. In others, you need consent. In the former case, you’d have evidence they are lying, in the latter, a rather large deterrent to do so, and refusing consent would seem rather suspicious, especially if you then took copious notes that could be used as evidence. If nothing else, it may just give you a feeling of having more control over proceedings.
My plan, if they ask me in for a reassessment exam/meeting, is certainly to ask for it to be recorded @Jen75 . There’s no way they’re getting away with that again!
I saw my GP today , and he is going to write a supporting letter (after I;ve told him what he needs to write!). He will basically reproduce the letter from last time with a new date on it - that was what won me my appeal. If a doctor is willing to write that you specifically can’t do something, it is very difficult for them to not “pass” you, as they know their decision won’t stand up at a tribunal. That’s my hope at least.
As I have the pleasure of a PIP reassessment this year as well, I am hoping that the letter will serve a dual purpose and can be reused for that. The fact I still don’t get the mobility component really pees me off, so perhaps there will be a silver lining.
A friend of mine had the same thing happen, her PT person needed to see so many people with certain issues to get some sort of professional certification (or whatever) and she discovered after the fact that her medical records had been falsified for her to have the conditions the PT person needed for the certification. Which created a massive mess for her disability down the road.
I think the only way to protect yourself is to get copies of your records periodically. That way you can read through them yourself and make sure it’s all okay. You can also mail them to yourself to prove an official date so if there’s any tampering later on you have some sort of leg to stand on.
My husband’s doctor went back and falsified chart notes after he missed a cancer Dx – not even just missing it, which could happen, that was not my issues as the cancer was a very rare form, my issue was with him not running the proper tests or telling even us about testing. Because I didn’t have copies of the original notes this stopped me from suing him for wrongful death. He changed the chart to imply he told us about tests and we opted out of them.
So, check your medical records periodically just for your own peace of mind.
I think you can have the meetings/assessments officially recorded, but as usually there’s a process to go through to do so. There’s various help groups to include the CAB doing sterling work helping people navigate the horror that all this has become too. When my brain wakes up more, I’ll try and find you some names.
It does seem, as you’ve already experienced though, that too many need to go to Tribunal to be sensibly assessed, given the actual assessment tends to be set in Alice in Wonderland or something similar, with Lewis Carroll/the creator of the assessment totally out to lunch on LSD or something similar. The stories of the extent of the ‘lies’ written in the assessments are truly just horrific. Like your example of being told you can ‘walk around your garden’ when you’re living in a 4th floor flat with no access to any garden. What really gets me though, is that there appears to no consequences for the assessor who simply ‘made up’ or plain ‘invented’ the assessment. There’s no shaming them, no loss of their job, no nothing. It appears they can just keep on writing such fiction whenever the mood takes them.
My plan is to get it recorded this time around - providing they feel the need for a face to face assessment. Providing my GP has written in his letter what he says he was going to write, one has to wonder why they would bother, as their decision to terminate ESA or change to work-related would pretty much certainly get overthrown at appeal or tribunal stage.
I don’t have any fears about ESA being refused - there’s no way the amount of points would be low enough for that to happen. And going to the work-related group is less a problem because of the reduced money and more an issue on the hassle that comes with that with regular interviews and possibly forced on to training programs etc - although whether they would do that given my qualifications, I have no idea.
Last time, they put me in work-related, and I sent in the GP letter and it was overturned in a week. It’s the effort of all this requires, and the relative uncertainty that is the problem. I like the way the last assessor put on his medical report that I “should be able to return to work after 18 months.” It’s arthritis! It ain’t going to get better - or cured. For sure, the benapali makes my day to day life less painful, as I potter around the house (although it’s working less well at the moment), but that’s not the same as work.
meanwhile, my bipolar has been worse since Christmas, and I went to the doc about that on Friday and am doubling my meds gradually. My mood isn’t too bad, but I’ve been muddled and forgetful, and that’s not like me - so meds taken at the wrong times, or wrong meds taken, forgetting to lock up when I go out, forgetting food is in the over etc. Hopefully thats a passing phase and I’m not going senile!
