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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

Physiotherapist and Mental Health

Patrick Joseph Hill
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Trafford Benefits Advice Service

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I understand that case law suggests that a Work Capability Assessment with regard to mental health issues is not best done by a Physiotherapist Health Care Professional.  However, I am led to believe that that opinion is now at odds with more recent opinions from members of an upper tier tribunal.  Is this the case please? 

As always, thank you.

Patrick.

Dan_Manville
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Mental health & welfare rights service - Wolverhampton City Council

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A three judge panel sat to advise on the probative value of physio reports. I haven’t read the decision yet as I’ve not had cause to but it’s out there somewhere.

edit

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/welfare-rights/caselaw/item/value-of-an-hcp-report-carried-out-by-a-physiotherapist-where-mental-health

kerching!

Patrick Joseph Hill
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Trafford Benefits Advice Service

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Thank you Dan.  I’ve printed off the full decision and hope to read it on t’ commute on t’ bus this evening.  Can’t promise I’ll manage it all, but if there is anything useful I’ll report it back.

Thank you again.

Patrick.

Dan_Manville
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If you’re on the 22 back home it’s a fair commute; you’ll have loads of time!

Patrick Joseph Hill
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Dan Manville - 17 August 2015 03:38 PM

If you’re on the 22 back home it’s a fair commute; you’ll have loads of time!

Nothing so simple I’m afraid.  A two hour and a half hour commute to work, then 2 hour commute back home.  I do my best reading on t’ bus.

Edmund Shepherd
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Tenancy Income, Royal Borough of Greenwich, London

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I press this point when I notice the report is composed by a Physiotherapist or OT. However, Tribunals seem to be more interested in the facts in the report and do their own questioning anyway, even if a doctor did the assessment. I haven’t yet had cause to take such a dispute to the Upper Tribunal .

Advisor_1
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Byker Community Trust

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I had this in a Tribunal last week. Client’s WCA was carried out by a Physiotherapist, and the assessment lasted 26 minutes, but was all mental health. We argued that the report had no probative value and the judge used the new case law to say that basically a Physio goes though the same training as anybody else. The assessor is not there to diagnose a condition, and is only there to see if the clients health problems, and their effects, fit in to the ‘ESA Framework’.

I believe the decision goes on to say that in their day to day work, a physiotherapist carrying out WCA’s will carry out assessments on those with mental health problems, and therefore they are gaining experience of these problems, and can learn to recognise behaviour and the severity of a condition that way. Therefore their background is pretty much irrelevant.

We then got the standard ‘we are looking at things afresh and are not bound by the findings of the HCP…...’

1964
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And of course, as long as the claimant isn’t ‘‘rocking’,  or ‘ruminating’ and is ‘orientated in time & space’ there’s nothing wrong with them mentally anyway.