claimant has appointee - who goes to appeal?

I have an IB appeal where Adult Services are the appointee because the person in question cannot manage their own affairs (don’t even get me started - I have exhausted all routes not to go to appeal but so far it is still on).

Anyway my question is, do I take the claimant or the appointee?

Yours, losing the will to live

Elaine

We have had a couple of adjourments where the judge has been unwiling to go ahead without seeing the claimant as well as the appointee. Both cases concered young adults who on the face of it seemed able to have some understanding of the reasons for the appeal and to be able to answer an appropriately framed question when it was put to them.

Perhaps you could ask for a Direction in advance of the hearing.

I think if the client themselves attended the medical, they should attend the hearing with their appointee. You need to explain that them talking about there difficulties is very hard , but they must be honest about what they struggle with.
What i tend to say the clients with LD or similar at Tribunal is ” You are alone at home for the weekend, you have now one coming to visit you or phone, you or take you out shopping or banking etc, what wouldn’t you be able to do without assistance?

Thank you for replies. I will take someone from Adult Services along with claimant, to be on the safe side.

Elaine

In my experience Tribunals find it very helpful to have both the appellant there - so they can form their own view of the level of disability - and a person with personal knowledge. of the impact of the condition. People with a degree of learning disability often “confabulate” - a combination of an unrealistic belief in their own abilities and a desire to please the person they are talking to. This can make them sound much better able to manage than they really are. The second witness should be able to give an outsider’s view, which could be rather different.

I echo Ariadne.  Tribunals want to see for themselves exactly how claimants respond to their questions in order to check their understanding.  So they need to question the claimant without interruption from the person accompanying them.  The tribunal will then ask the person accompanying them the same questions and compare the two sets of answers.

I’ve been in this situation many times.  Two examples will remain with me forever.  The first, a young woman with a learning disability who was accompanied by her housing support worker.  It was an ICB appeal and I put nearly all the mental health descriptors at issue.  To every question she answered (rather flatly and matter of fact) with a simple yes, no, sometimes or I don’t know, with little or, more often than not, no elaboration, looking at me on occasion for moral support.  She simply screamed vulnerability.  I don’t think she had any idea of how vulnerable she was and she appeared quite sad.  It was all quite moving really.  I had already sent in ample evidence of disability and ongoing support being provided.

It was obvious to anyone who was awake that, to use Ariadne’s term, she was confabulating and I could see that acknowledgement written all over the tribunal’s face.  I remember saying in my closing submission something along the lines of ‘we have to be realistic here…’ and the tribunal nodding in response.

The second one I will not forget was a DLA case and a claimant with a brain injury.  He could barely remember his own name let alone answer the questions, although he did manage to get a few short sentences out.  His evidence, or rather the lack of it, was compelling and his wife’s subsequent evidence merely dotted all the I’s and crossed the T’s.  They must have been two of the easiest decisions those two tribunals have ever had to make.

Thank you for all posts, appellant went with myself and SW - the appointee is actually Head of Adult Services, so he didn’t go…(!)

Very quick hearing, in and out and allowed…

Elaine