Disabled claimants excluded from UC WCA as they are never prompted to start the process

A colleague has raised this, and it would be helpful to know if others are coming across this problem.

She is finding that UC claimants with life-long conditions (e.g. learning disabilities, autism) are not getting in to the WCA, and so missing out on money, owing to the nature of the questions asked when applying for UC.

As they are online and we don’t complete UC claims, I haven’t seen the questions themselves, but it appears that there are two key questions (wording approximated):

- Are you sick?
- Do you have a condition that limits your ability to work?

The problem seems to lie in the former question – if you say no, because you are not sick, this is how you are every day, you are not prompted to get fit notes and do not go in to the WCA system.

If you disclose your lifelong condition in reply to the second question, this may lead to reduced conditionality and your case being handled in practical terms as if you have LCW/RA but no prompt is given to hand in fit notes, no formal decision is ever made, and so there is no additional element, no work allowance.

My colleague states that this situation affects claimants who quite clearly should have LCWRA.

Has this come up elsewhere? Any thoughts?

Andrew,

I don’t know whether the UC claims process has changed but originally there were two pages as follows.  The first page was headed up ‘Reporting Health Conditions’.  It went on to ask about any disabilities, illnesses or ongoing conditions.  There were boxes to free-type in (or possibly choose from a pick list) any relevant conditions e.g. anxiety.  The next page asked about ‘Support at Work’.  There were three prompted answers: wheelchair, hearing loop, and assistance dog.  Below these there was a box to free-type any other support required at work.

DWP terminology seems to run along the lines of a ‘health condition’ which could then potentially lead to a ‘health amount’ (or not) in the UC calculation.  I usually advise people to make sure that they declare their ‘health condition(s)’ when making the original claim.

If a ‘health condition’ is declared during the UC claim process then I believe the Case Manager is supposed to send a ‘to-do’ to the claimant asking for Med3 certificates.