Newcastle Recording Assesments Trial

Atos pilots audio recording of medicals.

Has there been any further news on this trial?

Hi,

Not that we're aware of.

Steve

I’m going to make some predictions about the results of these trials. I do hope this disclaimer is not needed but, for the record: I have no inside (or outside) knowledge of these trials. I am predicting how a powerful nexus of vested interests will protect itself.

It will take several months to “evaluate and report” on the trials – even if the results are known in advance (see below).

• I predict that it will be shown that only a small percentage of claimants actively wanted a recording. This will be transmuted into, “There was no demand for it.”
• It will be demonstrated that recording is expensive in terms of expertise and staff time setting up the recording and then handling and monitoring the records. Setting up, managing and passing on claimant copies will also add significantly to assessment time at a point when the system is already hard-pressed.
• There will be “significant Data Protection issues” (unspecified).
• Recording will be very unpopular with staff and a significant proportion will refuse to carry out interviews when recording has been requested. This will make timetabling very difficult.
• Staff will report being “intimidated” by having the assessment recorded, and say they feel threatened if they can be identified. Some have even said they will resign.
• The recording will not show how the staff filled in the Lima form, and so will be a misleadingly one-sided view of the assessment.
• It will emerge that very few recordings are used in tribunals – or anywhere else. They are therefore pointless. Of course, establishing this will take until the cohort of claimants who requested recordings have gone through appeals – this may well take more than a year. Those who did have recorded assessments may form a disproportionately small percentage of those going to appeal – this will be a coincidence.
• Recording an assessment will encourage claimants to think that what they say is what is entered into the computer program. This was never intended to be the case – what claimants say forms part of the assessment of a specialist disability analyst who uses that plus their own observations and the specialist program options to produce the report. That the report does not reflect what the claimants says is almost inevitable – unfortunately few not trained in this work understand that.

Recordings are, therefore, not particularly wanted by any but a few “challenging” claimants; they are costly in terms of money, time and staff morale; they are at best pointless and at worst seriously misleading to non-specialist tribunal members and the public at large.

There is, the report will conclude, no case for their wider introduction, and the existing provisions should be removed from the system.