New PIP2 forms and Child DLA converting to PIP letters from DWP

Our team in Norfolk CAB have had a couple of clients today with these forms and others with the older versions.

Given we are probably all having to work ‘remote’ it is clearly important when discussing the problems client are facing that we at least have the same form in front of us.

From quick look at the news article on the Benefits and Work website it appears it wil require a lot more writing and explanation by the applicant… not sure how that sits with accessibility.

Colleague had a client who has had the form and they allowed him to share across the service but sadly it was just photos of each page. Your tick box options are now reduced to a binary yes/no (which frankly I’ve no issue with) and there is marginally more space for extra info. but so what.

Here are my comments from our Teams discussion yesterday.

Having read the form I have mixed feelings. I can see what they were aiming for but I think they’ve largely missed again. From our perspective I suspect it’s of limited consequence. My concerns might differ to other peoples but might be worth highlighting for that reason.

They’ve taken on board criticism that the accompanying Notes for form completion were probably the least useful document ever written about PIP in the English language and they’ve tried to incorporate some of that into the form. Most claimants don’t read those Notes (I used to take them off clients and ask them to either bin without reading or I would bin them for them) and the claimants who do use those Notes invariably do very bad claim packs indeed. I’d be interested to know how the Notes have themselves been amended.

I couldn’t care less about whether there’s more space for extra information or not. My line has always been that if you can provide an answer in the space provided by DWP then you haven’t provided sufficient detail. I leave all those boxes blank; put “Please see the attached sheets” and attach between 4 and 13 sides of typed A4. 4 sides probably sounds a lot but translated into handwriting it’s basically filling each box and no more.

The bullet points immediately after the main headline questions are a significant improvement in terms of guidance. They are not perfect but they are certainly a step in the right direction. They are undone by at least one bullet on every question and the titles of some.

Sight impaired clients with central vision loss will always score 2 to 4 points on social engagement but of course they don’t because the thing remains titled “Mixing with people”. Social engagement has zilch to do with the ability to mix with people (how much case law is needed on exactly that before DMs get it?) and the continued use of that phrase leads claimants and DMs to believe that if you can go to your local shop and strike up a conversation with the girl on the till then you don’t score points, which is abject nonsense. Similar for people who work who apparently must therefore be able to socially engage. Again, abject nonsense and it all starts with the use of the word “mixing”.

I’m not sure I see any harm in one less tick box but I think there is potentially real harm done by use of the word “condition” immediately above that. The failure to acknowledge that condition has a plural is a stupid but consequential error. Some claimants will definitely decide a question doesn’t apply to them if their main condition isn’t the cause of their issues with that activity.

The bullet points which follow are, I think, a bigger problem. 21 years into the 21st century and we’re still getting the use of “good days” and “bad days”. It’s well evidenced that a good day for a claimant is a day on which their symptoms or functional impairment are a degree less than on other days whereas for a DM and tribunals a “good day” is a day on which those things have disappeared completely. It’s language we should never use and absolutely language which shouldn’t be in a PIP 2. Of all the things in this revised version that’s one which is near the top of my list.

Finally, they have yet again missed off the most fundamental thing about that extra info. DMs do not prioritise any of the bullet points. Their priority is to look for detailed real world examples of what happened when a person attempted activity x. The claims without that almost always fail. No mention of it at all as being the real purpose of those boxes. Massively frustrating.

A kindly colleague has shared one with me but it is too large to attach on the forum.

If anyone is in urgent need of this please email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

A very unwelcome re-emergence of the highly contagious bugbear that is ‘Good and Bad days’

RichB - 19 March 2021 01:25 PM

A kindly colleague has shared one with me but it is too large to attach on the forum.

If anyone is in urgent need of this please email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

A very unwelcome re-emergence of the highly contagious bugbear that is ‘Good and Bad days’

Indeed. Don’t suppose the shared one is in Word or pdf?

It’s a PDF

I guess the lexisnexis PIP tool probably shouldn’t be used now, unless/until it’s updated?

Hi

I helped a client with new form last week on phone where on setting up the appointment agreed to email him suggested form entries - few minutes into appointment phone call worked out that it was a “new” format form so this was a major challenge.

Used information form Benefits and Works website update and an increasingly frustrated client as I had to get him to read parts of form and me to scribble down notes - took over 2 hours on phone and even longer to compose an email with suggested responses.

So tried to hunt down form and after fruitless search of web phoned DWP PIP helpline - this was news to the adviser who said he would bring up at next team meeting and suggested I phone PIP new claim no which I did. He too was not aware of this and suggested I phone PIP helpline.

Copy attached (sourced from Neil at another office).

A pdf. Excellent thank you. On the wider experience…

I’m not sure I share the level of frustration. I think there’s an expectation developed over the years that somehow it’s possible to bang off a PIP 2 in an amount of time akin to that one might spend on a form for a means-tested benefit. We all have different ways of working dictated by personal preference; previous experience; the constraints of funding; hours etc. but, for me, doing a PIP 2 was always a 2 hour face to face appointment and that was just for note taking. Whilst many/most (?) might complete such forms in front of a claimant there and then my preference would always be to go back to the office; reflect; organise my notes and then spend 2 to 4 hours getting the PIP 2 itself done.

Lockdown etc. hasn’t really changed that for me. The face to face conversation is now over the phone but takes broadly the two hours it always did. The form filling is a mixed bag but if I can talk the claimant through doing health conditions, meds and ticking boxes my notes can be collated as extra sheets in Word and either emailed or posted to be added in. The re-ordering of the form is less than helpful and would undoubtedly have benefitted from some consultation but once you know it exists and reorders things then life carries on as (ahem) “normal”!

POSTED IN ERROR

Useful contributions… I imagine that the design of this new form is to mirror the arrival of an online version, the if ‘no go to next question’ approach would better support an on-line ‘form’.

The primary problem is that we, Norfolk Citizens Advice, are still working digitally… so fillable pdfs (WCA, MR and SSCS1)and tools like Simplified PIP have been invaluable for assisting a range of clients, such as with severe dyslexia and other learning disabilities, sight problems and those who simply cannot write or express themselves in written form.

What annoys me most, apart from the ‘good days bad days’, is that PIP is a benefit targetted at helping those with disabilities and yet the DWP appear not to have given consideration, or if they have it does not seem to have been published anywhere, as to whether this new form makes it more difficult for some… if so it is discriminatory unless there is mitigation. Probably the most important element of mitigation is enabling the many charities and organisations that support such clients by at least making them aware of the change and providing tools that match the fact that this Government still has us in lockdown.

I suppose the test will be whether the assessments improve as a consequence?

Is the form discriminatory in some way?

Probably the only way we will find out is from the quarterly statistics issued by the DWP, and only then if there is clarity in that data on when the new forms came in to use and, if it is only them being used from a specified date.

Equality Assessments are there to identify if there might be an issue… and, if so, are there some mitigating actions that could be taken to minimise potential problems.

Providing a fillable pdf version for the use of friends, relatives or agencies to help would be a low cost option… and already used for the ESA/UC50. The unique barcode used for PIP is not really an issue as you can send such evidence with the issued form in any case, as I think you have described.

Sorry, I probably wasn’t clear enough there. I am struggling to see what would be discriminatory about the revised form. What is specifically exclusionary for claimants (as opposed to inconvenient for advisers)?

Had to phone DWP PIP Helpline and whilst on phone asked agent if he was aware of the new form as had client who needed help over the phone who had received it

Surprise surprise he was totally unaware of it and completely doubted that a new form would be sent out without letting him and colleagues know about it - he then spent long time lecturing me that some organisations had previously created their own PIP2 forms and had been sending these in and it must be one of these.

I insisted that this client had received form with envelope etc from DWP and had talked to colleagues with clients having this new form plus read on various forums about this new form

I thought that was the end of it and agreed to differ but half an hour later he phoned me up and he said asked around including his line manager that there was no new form and that my client must have got hold of one of these “rogue” mocked up forms !!!!!