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Localtion of PIP medical assessments

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ElaineS
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Welfare benefit advisor - MHS Homes, Chatham

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Has anyone experienced PIP claimants having to travel miles for their medical assessments.  So far we have had 3 assessments.  One had to travel from Medway to London (Canning Town).  Another is going to Canterbury - some 40 miles away - ATOS have agreed to pay taxi fares which is not quite the point and also who is paying all this money for the fares ATOS or DWP?

I have now had another person who has severe anxiety and depression plus mobility problems and their assessment has been arranged some 11 miles away.  Whilst this is much closer than the other places it is out on a business estate, with no easy access by public transport and the person does not drive. Once again ATOS are having to arrange a taxi.

It would be interesting to know the scale of this problem.  Whether is is national or just in our area.

BC Welfare Rights
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The Brunswick Centre, Kirklees & Calderdale

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The assessment centres are supposed to be no more than 90 minutes away by public transport.

For claimants living in Huddersfield, the nearest centres are Halifax and Bradford, which are reasonably close in terms of mileage. However, all the centres that I know of are nowhere near bus or train stations. So person has to get bus from home to Hudds centre, get bus or train to Halifax/Bradford, then get another bus out to the assessment centre.

Including getting home, that could involve 6 different buses plus walking/waiting time. Not exactly easy for someone with no money and health problems.

Had quite a bit of difficulty getting Atos to pay travel expenses too; send off the claim form and nothing comes back, have to chase up, etc.

ElaineS
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Welfare benefit advisor - MHS Homes, Chatham

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This is just an utter disgrace.  I have emailed our DWP Partnership Manager to ask her to look into this further.  Like with your clients the centres I have mentioned include bus train and another bus.  All remote or difficult to get to places.

They have agreed to taxi fares for the one in Canterbury and the other person has applied over the telephone. ATOS filled out the form over the phone and been told they will get back to him.  What I can’t understand is on their website they have a centre in our area that is pretty central but nobody seems to be referred there.

Sharon M
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Derbyshire County Council

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Where we are in Chesterfield most clients are expected to get to Sheffield or Barnsley. The furthest we’ve had is Wakefield (48 miles). There are so many rural parts of Derbyshire that expecting someone to manage that sort of trip is ridiculous. Plenty of places with very few buses per day. The amount of staff time supporting people to their appointments is time and money most services can ill afford, not to mention it eats into time allocated to support people with actual productive activities related to their recovery or stability.

Chesterfield is the largest town in Derbyshire, only the city of Derby is bigger, many people this end of the county have a good idea of how to get here and the lay-out, so it really should have an assessment centre of its own. My manager has been raising this with Atos for some time. They have an assessment centre here for ESA.

The other thing is trying to get a home assessment from Atos, even with medical evidence from a psychiatrist insisting on it, that’s even harder than getting to one of their centres.

1964
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We have a similar issue. There are (allegedly at least) three assessment centres in Reading (albeit two of them are on the outskirts of the town) but many of our clients are asked to attend the Slough venue. Whilst there is a direct train service from Reading to Slough the venue at Slough is again on the outskirts of town and involves at best a taxi journey (and at worst a series of busses). Clients with mobility issues and clients with mental health problems really struggle with this.

I contacted ATOS about it a while ago and was reassured that clients who cannot attend the Slough centre can ask for an appointment at one of the Reading centres instead, but several clients who have attempted to do this have been effectively told to naff off (one client was told there is no Reading assessment centre…)

I agree re the home visits. I can only think of one client who successfully requested one (and then only because his GP provided a very supportive letter to back the request).

Julie Stuart
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Macmillan benefits adviser - Edinburgh Welfare Rights Service

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Ironically, 3 out of 4 assessments my clients have actually had have been at their home.  In one case this caused considerable bother because my client did not want it there as she was concealing the extent of her problems from her children.  The one who was asked to attend an assessment centre would have found it very much easier to attend one within a couple of miles of home where he could park rather than one in the city centre about 10 miles from home.  We also have cases of clients being asked to go to an outpost about 20 miles from the city centre eastwards when they live up to 7 miles on the west of the city.  It may be within their timing in theory but of course the practice of getting through the city centre and making connections between different bus/train operators is rather different.

It’s difficult to know what to say to clients - they could probably dispute the centre and ask for an assessment nearer home but then this could cause even more delay when they do have a prospect of getting an assessment in the near future if they possibly can get there.

Scott
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Welfare benefits advisor - Leeds City Council

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I have had an enquiry today from someone who has been asked to travel from North Leeds to Doncaster.  This is 43 miles away by car and it is really stretching the 90 minutes to the limit if she were to travel by a combination of bus and train to get there.  Ironically there is another assessment centre 1 mile from her home.  I am going to ask if she can be examined at the nearer location as she tells me she cannot travel that far but am concerned about the extra delays this will cause to her claim as she has already been waiting 6 months to get to this stage

Sharon M
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Derbyshire County Council

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Julie Stuart - 22 August 2014 09:06 AM

Ironically, 3 out of 4 assessments my clients have actually had have been at their home.  In one case this caused considerable bother because my client did not want it there as she was concealing the extent of her problems from her children.  The one who was asked to attend an assessment centre would have found it very much easier to attend one within a couple of miles of home where he could park rather than one in the city centre about 10 miles from home.  We also have cases of clients being asked to go to an outpost about 20 miles from the city centre eastwards when they live up to 7 miles on the west of the city.  It may be within their timing in theory but of course the practice of getting through the city centre and making connections between different bus/train operators is rather different.

It’s difficult to know what to say to clients - they could probably dispute the centre and ask for an assessment nearer home but then this could cause even more delay when they do have a prospect of getting an assessment in the near future if they possibly can get there.

Julie, is your area Atos or Capita?

Pete C
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I think this might be a widespread problem, I seem to recall a news story or a thread where it was suggested that although ATOS promised to have multiple assessment centres a lot the centres they had intended to use backed out at the last minute.
Locally our PIPS asessments seem to be being done in room in a chiropractors clinic in Truro and what seems to be the medical room of a leisure centre in StAustell. Although this seems a little odd they both have excellent parking facilities within a few yards of their front door so it may not be such a bad thing. The standard of the assessments is, from the few I have seen, disappointing and much of a muchness with the ESA ones.

Paul_Treloar_CPAG
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Advice and Rights Team, Child Poverty Action Group

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Disability News Service covered this a couple of times last year.

DWP finally reveals ‘shocking’ number of Atos PIP assessment sites which claimed that Atos only had one seventh of the PIP assessment centres originally put forward in its bid.

Atos fails to find a PIP assessment centre in north London which looked at a lack of assessment centres in north London, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk.

In an FOI request on this issue, the DWP responded by saying:

“Atos have demonstrated they have sufficient coverage to meet the current forecast demand for assessing new claims for PIP and will make additional sites from their network available as the volume of PIP assessments increases during the lifetime of the contract.

DWP is working closely with Atos to ensure that we deliver PIP in a way that meets the needs of disabled people and is confident the providers in each lot have been properly selected.”

Yep, no problem here, move alone please…..

Pete C
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Paul_Treloar_CPAG - 22 August 2014 10:17 AM

Disability News Service covered this a couple of times last year.

DWP finally reveals ‘shocking’ number of Atos PIP assessment sites which claimed that Atos only had one seventh of the PIP assessment centres originally put forward in its bid.

Atos fails to find a PIP assessment centre in north London which looked at a lack of assessment centres in north London, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk.

In an FOI request on this issue, the DWP responded by saying:

“Atos have demonstrated they have sufficient coverage to meet the current forecast demand for assessing new claims for PIP and will make additional sites from their network available as the volume of PIP assessments increases during the lifetime of the contract.

DWP is working closely with Atos to ensure that we deliver PIP in a way that meets the needs of disabled people and is confident the providers in each lot have been properly selected.”

Yep, no problem here, move alone please…..

Ah yes, the force in Obi Wan Duncan Smith strong it is!

juliem
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Macmillan welfare rights advisor - Barnsley MBC, Barnsley

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Yet people in Barnsley are being offered medicals in Wakefield, Sheffield and Chesterfield! Anywhere but Barnsley for many clients. If the system for allocating medicals was used for a logistics company it would go bankrupt with those wasteful jouneys.

Julie Stuart
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Macmillan benefits adviser - Edinburgh Welfare Rights Service

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SharonM - 22 August 2014 09:20 AM

Julie, is your area Atos or Capita?

Atos who in the run up didn’t anticipate the need for home visit assessments!

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

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One of the (many) issues with this is that ATOS did not anticipate two things:

1) If you’re employing low paid OTs/physios etc. rather than well paid GPs and consultants then they too are reluctant to spend money on travel and won’t agree to certain venues.

2) Many/most of the proposed venues were old building that were empty but physically usable and it was assumed they could just be brought back into use. Unfortunately, accessibility audits rapidly failed many of those and the process to bring them back into use could never get started. The cost of bringing stuff up to scratch in many cases would outweigh the profits to be made.

Peter Turville
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In Oxon Atos have sub-contracted to David Lloyd physio. One location is a GP surgery in a village outside Oxford and the other on an industial estate on the edge of town (which is their commercial physio centre).

Unless clients happen to live on the bus route it means a journey into central Oxford and out again from anywhere in the county (neither are served directly by the city bus network, only the less frequent longer routes) inc. a walk across town centre from bus / rail station to local bus stop. Thus both are more than 90 mins from almost anywhere in Oxon unless living on the single bus route that serves the venues!

And given the sub-contractor experience suggests most assessments are conducted by a physio?

miket
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Welfare Advice Team, South Gloucestershire Council

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Earlier this week I actually discovered (thanks to a client) that Atos have now opened more assessment centres in our meaning that my clients no longer have to travel in to the centre of Bristol which is a big positive. We even now have two in our LA area!

Has taken far too long to be arranged though.