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A guide to completing PIP

SarahJBatty
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Money Adviser, Thirteen, Middlesbrough

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Total Posts: 345

Joined: 12 July 2012

Hi folks
Maggie Zolobajluk of the advice community has asked me to post a link to this PIP guide that she has written.
She would appreciate any thoughts or comments.

https://mzolobajluk.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/a-guide-to-completing-additional-questions-for-personal-independence-payment/

Advisor_1
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Byker Community Trust

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Hi,

Ive just tried to take a look and the link doesn’t seem to work for me. Im not sure if it a problem at my end or if there is a way that we can view it in another format

Rosie W
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Welfare rights service - Northumberland County Council

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This may seem a bit nit picky but I would prefer “Layperson’s” to “Layman’s”

Mike Hughes
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Senior welfare rights officer - Salford City Council Welfare Rights Service

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I don’t think it’s nit picking at all. Neutral language is important and potentially more welcoming. Some of my comments could be characterised similarly but here goes. Apologies if this seems overly negative. 

1) As this is aimed at potential claimants then some will have a VI and some will have deteriorating vision because of age. Bearing that in mind the font size is serif and small. Whilst some people will benefit from magnification software or a screen reader, that doesn’t apply across the board and reading the text is exhausting.

2) I judge all such guides by asking the question as to what’s the gap in the market it fills. As this is very much a general guide I’m not sure that there is a gap. PIPinfo. now does much of this job remarkably well even if aimed predominantly at advisers and I’ve directed several claimants to the latter to some effect.

3) The level of detail is simply too much. A claimant who fears completing a claim pack is most unlikely to read this, or similar to be fair.

4) Some of the issues are contentious. Let’s be contentious then :) Most claims succeed without input from a professional of any kind. A fact we often blank out for, I suspect, obvious reasons. On DWPs own figures around 48% of successful first claims are accompanied by medical evidence. 52% either don’t have evidence or have other non-medical evidence. We actually have nothing beyond intuition to suggest that medical evidence was the decisive factor in that 48%. Indeed we only have intuition to tell as that what DWP call medical evidence was anything of the sort. 

Why then do we continue to emphasise medical evidence? The better question to ask is whether there is a gap in evidence which can best or only be filled by medical evidence? Bearing in mind that the original design of DLA included considerable input from organisations representing disabled people making exactly the point that medical evidence was not essential in the majority of cases and there was no evidence it was. The continued obsession helps neither claimants nor reps. So, I’m afraid when I read a guide that goes to great lengths to emphasise the need for input from medical professionals I can’t help but think the effort could be better directed. 

5) Similarly much thought is given to expressing all the different things that impact from a specific condition but none of it talks about how to express that and why it’s important. So, lots of questions about do you this or do you that but nothing about the best way to write that and why. My ten pence worth? I explain to claimants that if, for example, you fall then writing “I fall 3 times a week” is an assertion. Anyone could say that.

Better to tell the full story. The what, when, where, how, how often, who witnessed, the consequences etc. So, “I fall 3 times a week. This is caused by my right leg giving way and this can happen indoors or out. The last time it happened was 4 days ago. I fell over by the top 1 of 3 steps by my backdoor. I was unable to get up by myself as there was only the door frame to grab onto and no furniture nearby. I cut my leg but also my elbow. I also sprained my right ankle and was taken to my nearest NHS walk in and then to hospital by my friend x who saw me fall.” One is assertion. One is evidence. Outside of a hospital discharge note what medical evidence could best that? 


That moves you from assertion to actual evidence. Tell your story in other words. That’s a much simpler idea to put across and takes a lot less pages. Once a claimant has worked through a couple of examples from their own history my experience has been that no further explanation per question is needed. Once they get how simple it is they really get it.     

6) I do like the little flow chart. A simple thing like that much better illustrates the potential value of a guide like this for claimants.

7) If you’re going to do a booklet about form filling then, linking back to my 4 and 5 above it would break up the text to use images from an actual claim pack. I’ve done this for a VI booklet. Not much. Just one example of one question and one example of an additional sheet.

Hope this is taken in the spirit intended. We need more “user guides” but they also need to be clear on what it is they’re aiming to do and why.

[ Edited: 10 Feb 2017 at 02:57 pm by Mike Hughes ]