Miserable trap; some good friends made amongst absolute sharks
Disability Assessor (Former Employee) – Ballymena, County Antrim – 28 May 2019
I was briefly a DA - it is a job of extremes, with about 10% thriving on it and 90% being in the most miserable place mentally and emotionally they've ever been in their life.
Training is a little hard but fun, with a cohort starting at the same time. You make some friends, and it is paid - a good salary. 5 weeks easily passed.
There are essentially 3 variants of the job.
1) Paper-based, where someone's dependence is obvious, from records and medical notes. Boring, but easy money if you're IT literate.
2) Mainly clinic-based - you stay in clinic and people come to you. You listen to their tales and look for EVIDENCE of what they tell you. Their diagnosis is irrelevant in and of itself; independence, or specifically evidence of it, is what is assessed. This is not pleasant, basically because nearly everyone lies though their teeth to you and is clearly obvious, but you can bear it and write the report and be home before typical working hours would usually allow. HOWEVER very few areas allow you this - 90% are not this lucky.
3) Mainly (read, almost always) home visits. This is mental, physical, and emotional torture. The day is not 9-5pm. Read, 7:30am - 10pm to assess and submit reports. Some of reports will be returned to you by daily audit for 6 months (!), so next day you will have 7:30am-10pm PLUS amendments. Rinse and repeat. The actual assessment will be 5% people who ought never to have required an assessment, i.e. terminally ill or not compus mentis. >90% will be blatant, ill-informed liars who attempt to emotionally blackmail you - as a AHP, this is so, more...
Pros
Salary, some good friends who left same time as me
Cons
Aggressive lying clients, unreasonable management, physically impossible hours, mental health, poor equipment, no help
