My partner has a severe mental illness and has been receiving DLA and ESA (support group) for a few years. My partner was sent a form to be assessed from DLA to PIP and has a face to face appointment next week. My partner hears voices and is often suicidal, he isn't sleeping properly because he's worried about the face to face interview. I am his appointee, will I be allowed to answer questions on his behalf or does he have to answer himself? He has memory problems, are we allowed to take our photocopy of the form with us to refer to in the interview?
Things are even worse now as he has been told he is also being re-assessed for ESA and we have another form to fill in, so he's having to go through 2 reassessments at the same time. He is really distressed about this, if he gets turned down for both benefits we won't be able to afford to pay our bills. I have downloaded the ESA guide and will use that to fill the ESA form in, if anyone has any tips about how to deal with all this then please let me know.
Specifically for PIP, as their appointee you should be able to answer all of the questions on their behalf but expect the assessor to push for him to answer, it may help his claim if he does but use your judgement on the day.
If it will help, there is an electronic version of the ESA50
