My husband was in an RTA in 2018 and we only started claiming PIP in 2020. Recently he had his review after which we were told his PIP was being completely removed (May this year)!
I got on my angry and sarcastic high horse and sent of the mandatory appeal, along with the headway leaflet as the "evidence".
We have had to claim UC, I have had to get sick notes etc so that I can stay caring for him. I got angry mainly because although I am more than capable of filling in all the forms and talking to all the people involved, I knew that he would have been left with no money for bills or food without me there to support him. It just beggars belief that they can take away funding from somebody who has brain trauma and has constant support.
The original letter said that he could budget (he cannot, I do it all), cook a meal (he cannot, I batch cook and freeze meals for him to reheat or stand over him while instructing him what to do) and plan a journey (he cannot, we plan where we are going for days in advance so that it is in his head). The one thing he can do is drive! We paid for him to be assessed and he passed, I am always with him in the car (my car, on my insurance) and he never drives further than 15 minutes from home. They said that because he could drive he was all fixed!
I did point out that all the time they said he could do thing without "aids" they forgot the fact that his wife was his "aid" and without me backing him up he literally falls apart!
Last week we got a phone call to say the PIP had been reassessed and was being reinstated. Now I am going to say here that absolutely everybody at the DWP that we have had to deal with have been kind, helpful and understanding. But it appears the final decision on PIP is outsourced to some stupid idiot that should probably be claiming PIP himself for his complete incompetence 🤬
The woman that rang said that the original interviewer (you know, the person that met him and talked to him) had recommended he kept the PIP. The outsourced idiot had decided that because he could drive was the reason it was removed.
She said "He is allowed a life!" and that she had reinstated the PIP to great relief as I was starting to look for jobs, we simply cannot live on UC alone.
The irony is that due to this we are now claiming things we didn't claim before. I have also begun the process of long term sick as I have extreme and constant back pain. I may even be eligible to claim PIP myself! It has literally cost the Government more money and will continue to do so unless we cancel the claim.
So send in those appeals as they do sometimes work!
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TheirMema
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Hi, we have had the same issue, pip cancelled from June for my son, I am his legal deputy through court of protection, he lacks capacity to manage his finances. He went from scoring 30 points , higher rate daily living and lower rate mobility , to scoring nil points. The assessor was over an hour late and she finished the face to face assessment in a phone call to our car on the way home ! Unbelievable. We appealed mandatory reconsideration , inc dr letter and neuro rehab letter from consultant and they scored 4 points pip declined . My son can’t cope with going through a tribunal hearing , he had one years ago and it was like being a criminal in a court hearing. So that’s that. I am taking on more hours at work to try help him and his partner and baby financially. 550.00 a month less income and he can only work part time due to extreme fatigue. This country is a joke I hate it. He should pack in work altogether and he wou,d be financially better off but he needs routine and try’s hard to keep his life as it was before his TBI. Ime totally disgusted with the whole system.
I am really hoping all the changes that are due to come in will help those with TBI and somebody will realise it is not "fixable" but a life long issue! The woman I spoke to at DWP even said that the questions they ask are just not applicable as it is the problems surrounding things like finance that are not asked and worse affect those with TBI
Well done! It’s the same with CHC funding. Funding was removed in August 2022 I.e last year and reinstated in May 2023 this year. Only after 2 lots of appeal and a lot of stress due to financial considerations, paperwork and sleepless nights. So if you have the strength to fight for your loved ones’s wellbeing and your own carry on appealing decisions which are unfair!
Well done - I walked away from it all about 3 years ago because I had too much other shit going on having been taken to court for trespass in our family home by my dear mother (I had lived there second time around with her and Dad for 20 years post accident), emergency accommodation, Covid lockdown, etc.
3 years on I'm sort of on my feet again and am back to fighting this one, as you say Universal Credit is not the answer. So 2 weeks tomorrow I have to attend a face-to-face assessment with some (I'm sure) very nice person from Capita who will allegedly be a health professional. Taking my local Headway group chairlady with me, but I expect to get told to do one - last time like your husband I was told I could do all sorts that quite simply I couldn't manage, and I scored 0 out of 12. The whole thing was so stupid but I had too much else on like finding somewhere to live. Should say there I fell lucky with a housing association 🙂
This time I will take them on to the bitter end - the big problem with the authorities is they all think they know best even though all over the place they leave people in deep shit.
As I keep saying it all my responses and posts here we have to fight for everything no matter how difficult and traumatic because we are worth it,
I do wish you the best of luck. I always tell my husband he is bloody lucky to be married with somebody who studied psychology at uni so i can throw it all back in their faces with the technical terminology etc😁 Then I was a Civil Servant so knew exactly how forms are supposed to be filled in. I also told him I was ready, and willing, to go all the way with this on his behalf, He was absolutely terrified of going to court so a big sigh of relief from him because he knows when I am angry there is no stopping me and court would have been the next move.
It must be so hard to try and do this all on your own. It just appals me that if he had been living alone he would not have had the ability to fill in all the UC claim forms etc. He would have been homeless (no mortgage payments) and starving, no money to feed himself or pay bills) because he had no idea what to do when he got the letter. I just took it off him and did it all,
The worse thing is that it also made him feel very vulnerable as he now knows that he cannot cope on his own, whereas before he was able to convince himself he could.
Thanks, yes he is lucky to have you. I had to trust entirely to luck - even though at that point I was 21 years after joining the Head-bangers club I really didn't have a clue what I was doing and, if I'm honest, still don't.
I'm trying where I can to help those who may be unlucky or stupid enough to join the Head-bangers club in the future. It is damned hard work (the fatigue goes on) and dispiriting especially being a Head-banger it is quite likely the appearance is normal .... especially if your like me and try very hard to be "normal".
Thanks again for posting - hopefully you will have given others besides me a lift 🙂
did point out that all the time they said he could do thing without "aids" they forgot the fact that his wife was his "aid" and without me backing him up he literally falls apart! - This paragraph resonated with me, but as a mum. We are such strong ‘aids’. The back bone that everything is glued to and from one aid to another I congratulate and praise you. I have just gone through a 3 hour telephone review for my daughter as her appointee, which she would never have coped with doing or explaining her day to day difficulties. I currently await the decision.
I do hope you get a good result. They really do not seem to understand how important us "aids" are do they? I think you deserve as much praise as anybody else, we do it because we care 🥰
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