Looking at the horrors and dehumanising means of assessing PIP, which the govt introduced to cut down the previous DLA costs. Has anyone tried an FOI request to gain info about the difference in costs - upfront and back office ? Then a separate one about the specialties and experience of the assessors. Why not add another to ask who is in charge of quality?
It's the money they'll be interested in. It's partly the capabilities I'm interested in.
It's also the wicked sense of fun I have in knowing from my previous life that nothing was scarier than a FOI request. The deadlines are very tight.
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Lupiknits
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Note to Self: Number One Son will be back for a short break from HK at the end of the month. He's had more recent experience of FIO requests than I have. He also hates PIP passionately. 🤔
This isn’t an idle thought; it’s got all the makings of a cunning plan! Wendy is on the same line with the problems in Pembrokeshire. Politicians are like turkeys they don’t like surprises and Christmas!! Best wishes Kevin
Pretty much what Number One said, using naughty words!
I once had the pleasure of submitting a FOI request to the Govt Dept I worked in. I asked how many members of staff had chosen to describe themselves as disabled. I even had to explain a quick headcount of wheelchairs and guide/service dogs was not the right answer.
Jolly good fun, especially seeing the headless chickens at work. At that time they didn't even have a way of counting how many did work there.,
I have been writing letters to Hywel Dda UHB and Vaughan Gething Minster for Health and questioning the current system for a few months now. I’ve asked various relevant questions about the staffs lupus knowledge, whether they have PhDs in Lupus or have they had papers published or undertaken research etc.
I think I know the answers already. But a recent letter to the Chair of Hywel Dda has been handed over and us being dealt with as a Freedom of Information Act request.
They have asked me to clarify two of my questions but I am going to add a few more now I’ve got the chance.
I can’t wait to see what they come back with.
My husband thinks they have my photo on the back of the door and are throwing darts at me........
I don’t have any experience of PIP but what you are suggesting will certainly stir things up!
I've been following your work Wendy. Well done. At the moment I'm more likely to make it auto-immune rather than lupus specific but the idea has only popped into my head so there's a bit of thinking to be done.
I really do want to get a form of words that covers the general costs of PIP behind the up front costs of money we eventually are grudgingly given. It's like Oliver Twist asking for more！
A person from the council’s welfare rights place told me over phone that as far as she could ascertain it’s about politics rather than money.
She said that she had one client put a FOI in as a tax payer saying that she wanted to know because from her perspective, bullying disabled people, especially those with variable chronic illnesses, degenerative conditions and hidden disabilities, was a significant expense to the tax payer. She hadn’t yet heard the outcome at the time of speaking to me.
The Welfare Rights official deduced this was not really about saving money because of the additional cost of paying people a lot to sit on tribunal panels more and more, all the attending paperwork that goes with challenging or refusing claims and the huge additional postage and general admin costs.
So her very angry conclusion was that it wasn’t really about money at all as it’s actually more expensive for society at large to stop payments instead of being just and fair.
Rather it is all about appealing to the far right voters to show “we will sort these benefit scroungers, fraudulent malingerers out!”. Each time a tribunal overturns the decision of an assessor it costs the tax payer more as they then have to back pay the successful claimant. So why even put them through this degrading experience in the first place then if not to humiliate and hope to put them/ us off appealing by “teaching them/us a lesson”?!
So I hope you do it LK - especially if your son is on board to help. Xx
On the BBC Parliament Chanel I saw a Parliamentary Committee of MPs sitting investigating how the PIP & other Benefit Assessors assessors are recruited & the qualifications needed to become an assessor.
They were interviewing directors of the private companies who have the contract to provide these people.
As this was publicly broadcast I should think the results would be available if requested without needing a FIR.
I'll try to check that out, and see if it was a finance committee. Through today's brain slush a few neutrons are firing about taxpayers' money. Just interested to see what the procedural works costs v benefits received. In other words, value for money.
I "think" it was a Works & Pensions Committee ..it was chaired by Frank Field....I had just finished some work on pensions so I think that was why I watched it!
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