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Atos Medicals - Questions, Answers and Support

Um, I don't know what to think, David Clapson. I have looked at the benefit and work website and they have a very gloomy prognosis. 6 out of 7 mandatory reconsiderations fail, according to them. They are very adamant that you need to know all the tricks and wheezes but having already jumped ahead and done the initial form, would it make any difference subscribing. It isn't a huge amount of money (£20 ), I guess, but we should probably have done all this before applying in the first place. It seemed obvious (to us) that sweetheart was never going to be able to work again (or he would, FFS) and we were really a bit naive about how bloody intransigent and frankly callous, the whole thing is. No-one would be jumping through these humiliating hoops if they had any other choice. I frequently fear he is not even going to survive
another year, tbh.

I may have misunderstood, Kevbad the Bad. I thought that if you failed to get a mandatory reconsideration, you were basically fucked. I realise how much everything has changed in the last few years - even the possibility of having a face to face seems to have been closed down. I guess I really don't know the ins and outs of it all, anymore.
 
campanula said:
Um, I don't know what to think, David Clapson. I have looked at the benefit and work website and they have a very gloomy prognosis. 6 out of 7 mandatory reconsiderations fail, according to them. They are very adamant that you need to know all the tricks and wheezes but having already jumped ahead and done the initial form, would it make any difference subscribing. It isn't a huge amount of money (£20 ), I guess, but we should probably have done all this before applying in the first place. It seemed obvious (to us) that sweetheart was never going to be able to work again (or he would, FFS) and we were really a bit naive about how bloody intransigent and frankly callous, the whole thing is. No-one would be jumping through these humiliating hoops if they had any other choice. I frequently fear he is not even going to survive
another year, tbh.

I may have misunderstood, Kevbad the Bad. I thought that if you failed to get a mandatory reconsideration, you were basically fucked. I realise how much everything has changed in the last few years - even the possibility of having a face to face seems to have been closed down. I guess I really don't know the ins and outs of it all, anymore.
Click to expand...
It's a long shot, but it may be worth getting your M.P. On board. A cousin of mine contacted his, a rank Tory, and he intervened somehow (unofficially maybe?) and got the decision reviewed before it even got to mandatory reconsideration. That was for pip. I tried that too for a relative and it didn't work, although eventually we succeed. Might be worth trying. More work for you though. I could send you the blurb we received from benefits and work if you like, though it is a few years old now.
 
campanula said:
Um, I don't know what to think, David Clapson. I have looked at the benefit and work website and they have a very gloomy prognosis. 6 out of 7 mandatory reconsiderations fail, according to them. They are very adamant that you need to know all the tricks and wheezes but having already jumped ahead and done the initial form, would it make any difference subscribing. It isn't a huge amount of money (£20 ), I guess, but we should probably have done all this before applying in the first place. It seemed obvious (to us) that sweetheart was never going to be able to work again (or he would, FFS) and we were really a bit naive about how bloody intransigent and frankly callous, the whole thing is. No-one would be jumping through these humiliating hoops if they had any other choice. I frequently fear he is not even going to survive
another year, tbh.

I may have misunderstood, Kevbad the Bad. I thought that if you failed to get a mandatory reconsideration, you were basically fucked. I realise how much everything has changed in the last few years - even the possibility of having a face to face seems to have been closed down. I guess I really don't know the ins and outs of it all, anymore.
Click to expand...

previous advice on here was that the mandatory reconsideration was nearly always refused, but you had to do it first before going to appeal (which takes ages but nearly always gets the right decision and back-dated money).
 
campanula I'm on legacy ESA, not whatever baffling amalgamation of UC / "new style" ESA they're putting people on now which I'm unfamiliar with and may work differently, so don't want to give too much specific advice based on my own experiences. I'm happy to try looking stuff up for you some time this week though once I've recharged myself with some gardening :)

Just quickly looking through the list of resources I've used in the past to help people with applications/assessments/appeals -

Benefits and Work has already been mentioned I think? Let me know if you need a paid membership login.​
​
Rightsnet have various advisor guides here. You'd want the work capability assessment (WCA) one, I think, but the UC one may also be relevant.​
​
You can find the ESA criteria descriptors and points online e.g. disability rights uk. Their page also has a simple, clear guide on how to ask for a mandatory reconsideration here (I've quoted it below, but including the link as well so you can click through to related pages).​
​
Citizens advice have a good guide to filling in the ESA work capability form which will be largely applicable to UC and the appeals process too, in terms of how to think about what descriptors apply and the language to use.​
Some organisations for specific health conditions may also have benefits advice online that gives more relevant examples.​
The healthcare professionals (i.e. assessors) WCA handbook is also useful for guidance on how descriptors should be considered and applied, iirc.​

Disability Rights UK website said:
How to ask for a mandatory reconsideration

You can ask for a mandatory reconsideration over the phone, but you should confirm your request in writing. Write to the office address on the decision letter and keep a copy of your request. You can also ask for a mandatory reconsideration using form CRMR1. If you are claiming universal credit, you can ask for a mandatory reconsideration by using your online journal; if you do so, take a screenshot or photograph of the reconsideration request and confirm the request in writing or over the phone.

When you ask for a mandatory reconsideration, you should explain why you think the decision is wrong. If you can, get evidence to back up your argument.

In the case of benefits paid because of your disability or health condition, such as personal independence payment (PIP) or employment and support allowance, you will need to see the evidence that was used in making the decision before you can properly argue your case. In this case, write to the address (or ring the number) on the decision letter and do the following:
  • request a mandatory reconsideration of the decision. State your grounds simply at this stage, such as (for PIP), ‘I believe that you have underestimated the degree of my disability and consequently underestimated the extent of my mobility problems and/or the difficulties I have in carrying out daily living activities’;
  • ask them to send you copies of all the evidence that was used in making the decision; and
  • ask them not to take any further action until you have had the chance of responding to that evidence.
When you do receive the evidence, you should have a better idea of why the decision was made. This will help you frame your argument and build up evidence to support your case.
Click to expand...

Comparing what points he was awarded / what descriptors he met on the assessment report, once you have it, with what you/he think he should have scored (considering citizens advice guide / WCA handbook linked above; can he do activity repeatedly, reliably and safely; always frame answers as "no, unless..." / "not without..." rather than "yes, but...").
This is the basis of your request for mandatory reconsideration - along with any supporting evidence you can provide e.g. doctor's report - but as stated above, it's fine to put in a basic request for MR initially so you don't miss deadline and then get back to them later with all this. Make it clear that you will do this, ideally both by phone & in writing, and request they don't take further action until you've had the chance to respond to the evidence (WCA report) that they provide.

FWIW I've asked for mandatory reconsiderations in the past and been successful. It does happen. I get PIP too and the application & assessment process for that seemed to be pretty separate from ESA (and again, mandatory reconsideration got me moved from daily living standard to enhanced rate).

I can dig out examples of how I've worded MR letters if that would be at all helpful, but should stress that this is only what's worked for me and not necessarily the best way of doing it.
 
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I've had the extremes with Mandatory Reconsiderations (MR). One supported the Health Care Assistant's (HCA) view that there was nothing wrong with me. In my appeal I doubted very much whether they had even looked at my claim again. It was overturned at appeal (ESA Support Group).
Second one, again HCA decided there was nothing wrong with me but this one was overturned the decision, increased my PIP and made it an indefinite award ie no review date set.
I honestly think however that the MR stage is just another hurdle placed in the middle of the process to put people off from pursuing their claims. For this reason I agree totally with iona especially the bold bit.

Keep going campanula and partner. It can take a while but it's worth sticking in there.
 
campanula said:
would it make any difference subscribing
Click to expand...
Yes. You need to read the guides. They're only for subscribers. (And you can avoid paying by using iona's ID.)

There's so much to read and understand that it's a bit like doing an A level. It still astonishes me that a disabled person has to pass an A level to get the income which the welfare state is legally obliged to pay. But you have to accept this reality, or get someone else to do it for you, or give up.
 
Arrrgh, the DWP have now started insisting that sweetheart attends group work-focus stuff in person. Almost certain this is because he has had the temerity to raise his head above the parapet since he has never been asked to go into the job-centre since the start of Covid. Has started the Mandatory Reconsideration but I am having the greatest trouble in getting him to accept that the DWP do not play fair...and he is also really fucking resistant to admitting his level of disability...such as telling his GP that he can walk for a mile with a few stops. This is true, if we had all bloody day to do it. So his GP writes him a letter which does not mention the severity of his debility and also misses out quite a lot of stuff such as brittle bones and fragile skin. Why so? Because he didn't bring it up.
I have been a bit naive - I should have overseen his forms...but am on it now, but sweetheart is still struggling to see that the DWP is not any sort of welfare organisation. Also, he gets all bewildered and keeps asking if there is anything else he can apply for because he just cannot really accept that the modern Tory-led UK has no interest whatsoever in the well-being of it's citizen's. This is a profoundly disorientating shock for a lot of people - realising that the safety nets they fondly expected to exist, are no longer there. Instead, there is a pit filled with sharpened spears.
 
Kevbad the Bad said:
I've usually found that most DWP staff have been OK and friendly and helpful. ATOS seemingly friendly, but they, or a subsection behind the scenes, are the ones who are nasty and deceptive. At the tribunal level the DWP staff have been apologetic and almost fell over each other to criticise the earlier decisions.
Click to expand...
The dwp pays them to do that, in that way, for the results they get.

The individuals working for the dwp are often decent and human about their day to day job. The organisation however is still responsible for how it’s contractors operate.
 
campanula said:
I don't think we can do this without some advocacy so I am going to get my daughter to check out any local groups in Norwich (she is more plugged into the activist scene).
Click to expand...
There was help available at some Citizen Advice Bureau but I don't know how they are functioning post pandemic.
 
Sweetheart had to attend one of these last week. However, first off, it was a group interview of 15 people which took about 10 minutes. The DWP worker disclosed that 28 staff had been laid off since Covid and there weren't enough workers to manage to conduct ANY weekly interviews or ones which were one to one. Apparently, jobseekers (ha) do have a right to request being seen in private but seeing as the system is at breaking point doing group interviews every few months, the idea that over 100K people will be forced to attend weekly interviews is just a Tory wank fantasy.. Sweetheart has been told he will not have to attend again for 3 months. Coffey is a filthy vicious cunt who hasn't a fucking clue. Despised by DWP staff.
 
campanula said:
Sweetheart had to attend one of these last week. However, first off, it was a group interview of 15 people which took about 10 minutes. The DWP worker disclosed that 28 staff had been laid off since Covid and there weren't enough workers to manage to conduct ANY weekly interviews or ones which were one to one. Apparently, jobseekers (ha) do have a right to request being seen in private but seeing as the system is at breaking point doing group interviews every few months, the idea that over 100K people will be forced to attend weekly interviews is just a Tory wank fantasy.. Sweetheart has been told he will not have to attend again for 3 months. Coffey is a filthy vicious cunt who hasn't a fucking clue. Despised by DWP staff.
Click to expand...
Even though a hierarchy of tory scum is ultimately pointless, and the fact they are all irredeemably evil, I actually think she's the worst. Dead eyed unpleasant and thoroughly ignorant. Like a diseased cow that's been trained to kill
 
Karl Masks said:
Even though a hierarchy of tory scum is ultimately pointless, and the fact they are all irredeemably evil, I actually think she's the worst. Dead eyed unpleasant and thoroughly ignorant. Like a diseased cow that's been trained to kill
Click to expand...
Me too. Not just because we (sweetheart and I) are under the DWP lash, but because Coffey really is a spiteful, hate-filled individual who, I think, loathes ordinary people who are put in a position where they require supplemental help. Coffey appears to see us as less then human, scrounging, dishonest filth, because everything she sees and does is filtered through her own brutal lens. Some, like Truss, are just ignorant, unthinking and basically selfish, while others are unapologetic opportunists who barely consider the public at all. Coffey, otoh, is one of those who actively despises us, for some opaque reasoning, and who deliberately chooses to promote a hateful agenda of some sort of vicious social Darwinism. Pretty certain she would happily sign up for nation-wide eugenics, forced sterilisation and segregation - the whole works.
 
campanula said:
Me too. Not just because we (sweetheart and I) are under the DWP lash, but because Coffey really is a spiteful, hate-filled individual who, I think, loathes ordinary people who are put in a position where they require supplemental help. Coffey appears to see us as less then human, scrounging, dishonest filth, because everything she sees and does is filtered through her own brutal lens. Some, like Truss, are just ignorant, unthinking and basically selfish, while others are unapologetic opportunists who barely consider the public at all. Coffey, otoh, is one of those who actively despises us, for some opaque reasoning, and who deliberately chooses to promote a hateful agenda of some sort of vicious social Darwinism. Pretty certain she would happily sign up for nation-wide eugenics, forced sterilisation and segregation - the whole works.
Click to expand...
I mean, she just has that look of aggressive indifference that explains utter callousness. It'd be very easy to mock her obvious attributes, but honestly with a creature as morally hideous as her I find it hard to care.
 
Karl Masks said:
I mean, she just has that look of aggressive indifference that explains utter callousness. It'd be very easy to mock her obvious attributes, but honestly with a creature as morally hideous as her I find it hard to care.
Click to expand...
Her 'obvious attributes' are sneakily ushering in sly rulings which demonise the most vulnerable people in the UK. To blithely load more grief and humiliation onto people who get the lowest welfare payments in Europe. Basically, to pick on and bully people who are living with pain, distress, uncertainty and poverty. A moral vacuum and despicable human being.
 
Karl Masks said:
I mean, she just has that look of aggressive indifference that explains utter callousness. It'd be very easy to mock her obvious attributes, but honestly with a creature as morally hideous as her I find it hard to care.
Click to expand...
I haven’t got a mental picture of who this refers to but I’m assuming you mean mocking some physical aspect or other. Don’t know if this helps but the reason to care about mocking peoples physique or other aspect of their appearance has nothing to do with caring about that person. It’s so as not to mock every other person who shares those physical attributes or quirks of appearance.

To pick a very common example, I don’t think any of those scum currently holding power in the Houses of Parliament would care about someone taking the piss about them being overweight on this forum. But it’d burn anyone reading it who is unhappy about their weight.
 
Finally, just before the tribunal date, DWP have put Sweetheart in the LCWRA (?) group so he gets measly, but still highly welcome increase of almost £30 a week but more importantly, left alone without the soul-sapping and intrusive work interviews. O, an a whole year and half of backdated £££ which is a nifty extra and will fund some more solar panels, new windows in the horsebox and hopefully, a decent hand pump for the new standpipe. This is the year of moving the horsebox, rotating it 90% so direct sunlight goes in the windows instead of perpetual gloom.

It has been a shitty, awful, demoralising process. - endless letters, pleading with medical people who are already over-stressed, reading pages and pages of obtuse bureaucratic ramblings...fighting for such a pathetically tiny amount of benefit. Getting fired up to do PIP next.
 
Thank you. I honestly would not wish this on my enemies, tbh. I could barely engage with anyone because it just took so much energy...and I was angry all the time...I had to avoid friends and family because I didn't want to push any bad feelings onto other people. I was actually shocked at how helpless and furious I was feeling, for months. Plus, Sweetheart is seriously ill and not going to get better so I felt I had to be upbeat and optimistic around him while I was feeling quite insane, a lot of the time. I would never have imagined how a fairly simple process can leave anyone feeling so...bereft. I am normally a cheerful, if antisocial type but for such a long time, I honestly struggled to not become overwhelmed by the whole situation. I cannot shake the feeling that this is quite a callous, managed situation - nothing whatsoever to do with staff shortages or difficult paperwork but actually DESIGNED to be as difficult and frustrating as possible. I had heard that this was indeed the case but was slightly sceptical that an official govt. department would be so deliberately unhelpful for the most vulnerable, distressed and ill people...almost as if the official view is that everyone else is scamming or trying it on...for a sum of money sweetheart could have earned in a couple of hours, if he was able to do so. And the humiliation and shame...I hate these people (DWP)...even the casual way they just capitulated., days before a tribunal was going to be set..but only after months and months of letters and pleading in that shitty 'journal'.

R does not want to have to go through this again and is not keen on applying for PIP but I fucking swear, I am going to get right back on it (after a week or so of respite) and make certain he gets every single penny he can.
 
Well done and best wishes to you both. PIP is not too difficult to apply for. I've supported a couple of people to do it in my job. You have to be really methodical with the application. It's 2 stages, the first is by by phone typical wait time to speak to someone about 40-50 mins, then you answer a load of questions and providing they are satisfied with the answers they will post a big form out. Any advice please ask :)
 
Got my pip form in nothing has really changed bar breaking my same leg again
the form says report any changes in circumstances but nothing really has I am
still, in pain all the time and take the same medication so it looks straight forward
to me so will sign and send it off ..... but is this a good idea I did the same last
time :hmm: im struggling to put down anything else none wants to help me fill it in.
 
We are in the same boat at the moment. We are writing that nothings changed, but still writing any aids and support my partner does need - not as much detail as last time obviously as the form is much shorter.
 
passenger said:
Got my pip form in nothing has really changed bar breaking my same leg again
the form says report any changes in circumstances but nothing really has I am
still, in pain all the time and take the same medication so it looks straight forward
to me so will sign and send it off ..... but is this a good idea I did the same last
time :hmm: im struggling to put down anything else none wants to help me fill it in.
Click to expand...
I just write "no change - see answer from previous pip form (copy enclosed in supporting evidence)" and then send photocopies from the relevant page of my initial PIP application. Just sent mine off the other week.
 
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