Has anyone else had problems getting forms for IB in youth from the Torquay call centre? My client's daughter is 18yrs, severely disabled (High & High DLA) and attends a special school.Client (who is appointee) was twice refused IBY forms by Helpline, once on the grounds that daughter was in F/T education and therefore not eligible and on a second call because the daughter had not made any NI contributions. My client may have been slightly unclear about the grounds for her daughter's claim but it seems that very little attempt was made by helpline to clarify matters and on both occaisions they refused to send out the form on the grounds that daughter wouldn't be eligible and there was no point.

I think that what concerns me the most about this is the apparent supplanting of the role of decision makers by the helpline staff, surely it isn't within their powers to refuse to allow a claim to be made.In most 'grey area' claims we are told to make a claim and leave it to the DM (and ultimately the appeal process) to sort out. This wasn't even a grey area! I can only speculate as to how many claims have never got off the starting blocks because of this.

has anyone else had these problems?

thanks pc

No matter how unlikely a claim may sound, Call centre staff do not have the powers to refuse to send a claim form...we have had this on several occasions, and each time have had to insist on speaking to a supervisor before finally getting a form sent out. This is an age old problem, which use to exist in the old BA days - counter staff regularly imparting somewhat dubious advice etc.........

And here. We included a do it yourself guide in our bulletin about claiming ICB in youth. The mother of a disabled child attempted to claim and was given the runaround by the callcentre and told no claim possible. She persisted armed with our article and asked them to comment on whether the local WRU were prone to lying in their bulletin.

We complained and now we have a system in place where the young persons advisor at the local Jobcentre does the claim and the callcentre staff have been brought up to par. The reasons given for the way she was treated were that the callcentre was geared to 18+, CMS wasn't geared to ICB in youth, and the local JC were not aware that they could take these claims.

It's worrying that other claimants will have been given duff information and accepted the refusal to send claim forms. In this instance the mother had real bottle and wasn't prepared to back down.

It has spawned a direct liason with the local Jobcentre which wasn't there before and the first meeting began tentatively but got better. I think they expected us to turn up with AK47's and bags of attitude.

In a July 2005 decision, CIB/1410/2005, Commissioner Jacobs held that that there needs to be a 'separate claim' made for IBIY, and that the wording of Section 30A of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 does not create IBIY as a separate benefit but only a different set of conditions for those whose incapacity began in youth.

There is a summary of CIB/1410/2005 in the briefcase area of rightsnet that includes a link to the full decision itself available on the www.osscsc.gov.uk website.

Thanks everyone for your input, i had actually managed to get a claim form sent before i posted the message yesterday. Following Semitone's lead I think we will be contacting the local Jobcentre as this looks like the refusal to send forms or take claims may be yet another endearing feture of CMS,

pc

pc
you made a very important point in your first post, there is a problem of 'control of the claims gateway' supplanting the statutory decision-making process - an abuse of power.

'how many claims never get off the stumbling block' worries me too, and not every body has a determined mother or active advice agencies to persist or find 'work arounds' for the problems of CMS.

the answer to the problem lies within the DWP's own power, and until they issue clear instructions to call centre staff that anyone is entitled to make a claim and receive a decision on their claim, and no-one should be refused a claim form, their reassurances and apologies will continue to ring hollow, and the treasury is quids in.

jj

jj
I agree totally with that but its even scarier to see it face to face. At the meeting we had with the Jobcentre this was obviously one of the points raised in connection with the ICB in youth complaint we had, that callcentre and jobcentre staff were assuming the role of decision makers. We pointed out that they had no right to refuse a claim, even if at first glance it was obvious it was going to fail.
I think it scared them for some reason and they had trouble getting their heads round it.

What really turns my jeans a different colour is the thought of the process taking over and making slaves of callcentre and jobcentre staff who eventually forget the art of thinking for themselves. There was a local news item some time ago about a shop where the electric tills packed up. The shop closed for the day because the staff couldn't add up. I envisage similar difficulties with callcentre and jobcentre staff who are continually working from scripts and guidance which they regard as tablets from Mount Sinai.

absolutely. i had a demonstration of how insidious this is today receiving a copy of a PCA report, which inexplicably was a hand-written one - the doctor, and i was surprised by this, had done that annoying repetition of a phrase thing, in three separate areas of the HANDWRITTEN form - aping the computer version. it blew my theory that human beings don't produce reports like computers, and wouldn't repeat phrases over and over - we would write 'see box X' or re-phrase it, to avoid sounding like a parrot...right out of the water.

i'm having problems with jobcentres not issuing decisions on HRT - people are signing on for months, without a decision, and i think there are grounds for concern that administration, not just the claims process, is supplanting the statutory decision-making process and the law.

jj