Tag Archives: PIP

The Human Side of Politics

I rarely write about politics, although I have taken part in other media regarding the utter disregard the national political narrative seems to have for disabled people, despite the fact there are 13.9 million of us in the UK.

Since the global recession, the optics have been cleverly shifted away from the very source of the problem – the finance sector – to the most vulnerable of its victims – us. And when that ‘us’ have no voice, it’s a recipe for right-wing thinking.

Slashing disability benefits was a good place to start and allowed the media free reign to wage war on us, and how. We were cast as the ones draining the economy, not the foolhardy bankers. It’s a staggering leap, but the press and public latched on to it with a vengeance.

Living in a marginal seat, I’m going to share my experience of my previous MP, Labour’s Anna McMorrin and her Conservative predecessor.

Long story short, Anna McMorrin displayed a deep compassion not often seen in today’s politics.

A few years ago, I noticed that the parents of a local school took every disabled space in the main car park, behind the shops where I live, twice, three times a day. I asked a few of them why they did this as there were plenty of other non-disabled spaces. Their replies were illuminating:

‘Disabled people don’t go out this early’

‘It’s only for five minutes, what’s your problem?’

‘They’re all scammers anyway’

When I met my Conservative MP canvassing for votes outside those shops one day, I approached him and asked him if he would help with this matter. He told me it wasn’t his problem and I should speak to the school involved. When I said I already had and was told, ‘it’s not my problem, speak to your MP’, he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough and in an extremely dismissive manner.

Fast-forward to October 2017, five years after I was awarded a lifetime Disability Living Allowance(DLA) due to my diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Until MS is curable, it makes sense; it’s a progressive, degenerative illness.

I received my ‘invitation’ to reapply for the new Personal Independence Payment as DLA would be stopped. I went into a tailspin – for five years I had tried to remain positive, focus on the positive and, well, be as positive as I could be living with MS. Now I was invited to write endless answers about how much MS had negatively impacted my life and would continue to do so.

It was a desolate, soul-destroying experience, picking apart my life in minute, excruciatingly personal detail. I went in to a deep depression and had to ask for further time to complete the paperwork. However, I was blessed to have wonderful support in Stuart and Marie Nixon who held my hand and kept me sane throughout the whole experience.

I submitted the paperwork on Christmas Eve 2017. On 13th February 2018, I had a face-to-face assessment at home by a Capita representative. I could write endless blogs about this car-crash, but suffice to say, she somehow observed that I was absolutely fine (without any Quality of Life measures or fatigue measures undertaken, amongst many other complaints) without taking her eyes off her computer. In fact, she appeared stressed, hurried and short-tempered and told me she had had a long day and I was the last on her list.

Of course, the next month, my benefit was reduced drastically. I send a mandatory reconsideration letter. This was turned down. I sent an appeal for a tribunal, and was informed at the end of June 2018 that it would be held at ‘some point in the future’.

And then fate intervened; someone who reads my blog met my MP, as-then Labour’s Anna McMorrin, and told her of my case. This person (still anonymous to this day), emailed me, urging me to contact Anna as she could help me. I didn’t hold out much hope, but was running out of options, so I called her office and spoke to a lovely case-worker, Lauren. I sent documents over and waited for the rebuttal.

It never happened. Instead, Anna and her team fast-tracked my appeal, moving it from a normal PIP tribunal to a District Tribunal Judge. By this time, I was in hospital for a hernia operation, as if MS wasn’t enough. After two nights under observation, I came home to a letter – in my absence, I was awarded PIP.

To add some context to how much this means to me – the loss of DLA meant I was perilously close to homelessness. In preparation, I had already contacted shelters and advice-lines as to what my next steps could be and the outlook was bleak. I have no partner to fall back on and due to MS, I work part-time so all living expenses were my responsibility, with the added stress of factoring in time off for MS problems. I spent endless hours working out the figures and they simply didn’t add up. It was a tipping point.

In short, Anna McMorrin has kept me in the house I have made home for me and my son for the last 15 years. I am not in a shelter, awaiting rehousing. I have breathing space, so I can pursue my dreams of further study. I feel safe.

My body might continue to conspire against me and it does so on a daily basis. But to know that I still have my own personal space, and to keep hold of the only home my son has ever consciously known, means the world.

I believe we have a Conservative candidate parachuted in from London. He may well have grown up in Cardiff. I grew up in Glasgow, left as a teenager, but would never claim to understand the intrinsic social problems there now. I do not want this person to represent me.

Anna McMorrin restored my faith in politics and for that reason, I will support her all the way, as she did for me.

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Judge, Jury and Executioner?

The day I got back home from my hernia operation, I received a letter from the Tribunal Service.

Probably the best ‘dreaded brown envelope’ I’ve ever had.

Without my knowledge, a PIP Appeals Hearing had been held in my absence and to cut a long story short, I won the case. And so ends 11 months of diabolical stress.

This would not have happened without the support of Stuart and Marie Nixon, and my MP, Anna McMorrin.

A reader of my blog put me in touch with Anna and she took up my case, expediting it through the system.

However, I could not obtain crucial evidence from my MS nurse, as the DWP had told them it would be disregarded. I have since found out GP’s and MP’s themselves are also being told that their evidence will be similarly disregarded.

This goes completely against the DWP’s own published guidelines:

From the DWP’s own PIP guidance booklet

Sending in additional supporting evidence

We want to use the widest range of evidence when we assess PIP claims to
ensure awards are made correctly and claimants are paid promptly.
It is very important that claimants provide us with any relevant evidence or
information they already have that explains how their condition affects them.

Information that will help us to assess a PIP claim
Reports about the claimant from:
• specialist nurses
• community psychiatric nurses
• social workers
• occupational therapists
• GPs
• hospital doctors
• physiotherapists
• support worker

Not only that, the DWP has admitted that Capita PIP assessors do not need expertise in medical conditions they assess.

So let me get this straight. We cannot submit medical evidence from those who know us best. And then they send us an assessor who has no real knowledge of our condition.

I call this out as blatant discrimination. It’s a guaranteed no-win situation.

Although my case has been resolved, this does not end here.

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12 Minutes …

For many of us going through the DLA to PIP process, it’s a devastating slide into everything we never wanted to face.

What can’t you do. And why?

After years of muddling through, re-adapting, making concessions for MS, we have to admit our endless ‘shortcomings’. Our failings.

We realise, sometimes with a huge thud, just what we can’t do. I plunged into a deep depression, because I actually thought I was doing ok, bar walking into walls and falling asleep at the slightest opportunity.

My forms took weeks to fill in. Painstaking. Personal, hideously personal. Numerous extra pages of ‘Cont. Info’ were included.

48 pages in all. Basically, my entire life in one document.

As a birthday present last week, a huge pile of tribunal papers arrived along with cards and flowers. Nice touch.

Buried in amongst over a hundred pages, I discovered that my form had a ‘considered/writing up time’ of 12 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty impressive. To read a compressed life with MS, all 48 pages, plus consider them and write a response in 12 minutes is speedy by anyone’s standard. Bearing in mind it’s not a new claim, but a transition from a lifetime award for DLA.

The result?

A face-to-face consideration was required. Which happened – apparently – although neither me nor my witness recognise the meeting she refers to. And this ‘health care professional’ appears to have the upper hand in my forthcoming tribunal.

Her ‘evidence’ is the ‘truth’. She was here, in my house, for 50 minutes in total. That includes losing her way (my mum directed her on the phone), coming in, setting up her laptop, talking to me (without looking at me), packing up and leaving.

It appears my entire tribunal rests upon her ‘clinical’ finding and ‘observations’.

I’m impressed.

To destroy someone’s life in 50 minutes is bad enough, but the lead-in took 12.

I am that insignificant. All my pain, my symptoms, my life being turned on its head. Not only that, the end of my planned future, being sacked from work, the endless relapses, the invasive treatments I’ve had. Not to mention their side-effects (hello, Fatty-Puff-Me).

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the person who knows me and my MS probably better than most, my wonderful MS nurse, cannot write a statement for the tribunal. Aside from the logistical nightmare that this would cause for the under-funded department, they have been ‘told’ by the DWP that their evidence is ‘meaningless’ and ‘patient-directed’ so therefore inadmissible.

So I face a tribunal based almost solely upon evidence of someone who does not know me, triggered by someone in an office who does not know me.

Ok.

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Trials and Tribunals

Hmm.

What do you think would happen if you missed a DWP deadline, with no explanation?

Yep, you’d be ‘struck off’ and told to apply again, if at all.

Since first being contacted for my transition from DLA to PIP in October last year, I have hit all deadlines bar one – I was extremely ill and needed a couple of extra weeks to complete the forms.

The DWP were swiftly informed and sent out re-adjusted timelines accordingly.

Since then, I have had a decision, had a home visit, had another decision, had a mandatory reconsideration and been turned down on the points I made.

So now it’s going to a tribunal. I duly sent off the forms and had a letter back from the HM Courts & Tribunals Service. The DWP had 28 days to send a response.

That date was 3rd August. Hearing nothing, I phoned the Tribunals Service for information. I discovered the DWP has ignored them and will be sent a letter to prompt them for a response. Anyone here ever had a gentle ‘prompt’ letter with no sanctions attached?

This letter will give them an extra 14 days to respond. If they still ignore my case, a judge will decide how best to proceed.

If the DWP had responded on time, a likely tribunal would be held at the end of November this year, a full 14 months after first starting this endless, pointless paper trail. 22 weeks is the standard waiting time from lodging an appeal to it being heard.

With their non-response, it’ll probably be Christmas Eve.

To be fair, the woman I spoke to at the Tribunals Service was amazing; my story is nothing she has not heard before. Day after day she takes similar phone-calls, digging down in to the whole ‘lifetime’ award scenario for incurable illness, such as MS.

As an unexpected aside, a wonderful regular reader of my blog met my MP at a local event last week and outlined my case to her, even giving her my blog address. Long story short, I have since contacted my MP’s office and hopefully they will be taking up my fight, alongside my fantastically patient supporters who helped me fill in all the forms.

I’ve just dug out a letter from Capita about my home assessment. Clearly stated, there is the line, ‘if you fail to attend without a good reason, the decision-maker at the DWP is likely to refuse your claim’.

One rule for them ..?

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Ta Da! Unveiling The Five-Year-Plan …

You know me, I love a challenge.

Over the years I’ve been blogging, I’ve considered learning the saxaphone, finding out how to cook rice properly and going to one of those women who hold coloured swatches up to your face and then let you know if you should wear ‘Summer’ or ‘Autumn’ shades.

None of which has happened, unsurprisingly.

So now The Teenager is making his own way in the world at University (apart from when he’s not, aka the three-month-summer-break-at-mum’s), I’ve got a few pockets of time on my hands. And what better way to fill them than with a PhD. Yup, I’m going for it, even though I’m also gearing up for a PIP tribunal, which is definitely the more terrifying prospect.

It’s quite probably the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever had, apart from deciding all by myself that I’m a ‘Winter’ shade, which makes me look like an eerie Celtic ghoul.

I’ve taken the first tentative steps, sending in a proposal. I found out there are now Postgraduate Loans, for the first time. Karma? When I blogged about it before, you guys were beyond encouraging and that in itself gives me courage.

I would take it over five years, part-time, as I still need to work. It could end in failure, and maybe I’ll walk away with an MPhil after a couple of years, but it’s still an achievement.

And therein lies the nub; I have a great job but no career – I can’t work my way up as the only person above me is Grumpy Boss. I’ve resigned myself to living out my days without a significant other, besides the cat (and I’m half-way to 90 in August, gah).

It’s not about feeling sorry for myself; I’m actually getting quite excited now, the more I look over my proposal (which includes writing a novel with MS firmly at its centre). I just need a focus, another routine besides work and lying on the sofa. Pinballing between the two is bringing me down.

I’m not the most accomplished academic writer in the world, but I’m a trier. The best thing about writing, as opposed to speaking (garbled, often), is that I can delete, delete, delete. Giving myself five years to write a novel means I can factor in the inevitable relapses, the brain fog and the days when I just can’t move.

So now I’m daydreaming a lot in work, during these long hot days when I tuck myself into the nearest shadow and lurk until I cool down. I see myself, pen in hand, fresh notebook page in front of me, jotting down Very Important Points.

If I ever went out in normal society (work doesn’t count, believe me), I would wear a beret and lots of beads. And green reading glasses.

I would look v. v. intelligent, but if anyone looked a bit closer, they’d probably see I was only googling ‘how to cook rice’.

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