Hello I'm new.

My son is 22 and has autism, he has been receiving high rate care and high rate Mobility DLA since he was five years old, he had a lifetime award. He is being moved over to PIP and has been called for an assessment.
My son doesn't speak as he also has selective mutism which means when he is in a stressful situation or with people he doesn't know he is effectively mute. He also rarely leaves the house and never without an adult because he is vulnerable and would be unable to get help if needed added to which he avoids all contact with people he doesn't know and has no desire to do activities outside the house.so there is no incentive for him to do so. Once a week he goes to his brother's a mile down the road with his Dad.
My son is obviously man sized and to get him to the assessment will need a lot of preparation, I explained I would need photos of the building and the rooms and the person assessing him (as yet not received) Even with preparation there is no guarantee that he will not refuse on the day,in fact I would say it's almost guaranteed he will refuse to leave the house, leave the car or do a runner from the assessment centre if he is feeling under pressure.
My husband is his appointee so will obviously be attending with him but we cannot and will not restrain him or use force to get him there. All advice welcome

Hi Mutty,

Welcome to the forum, you might want to have a look at the following FAQ which explain where everything is

Welcome to Benefits and Work

Would a home assessment be easier for your son to handle? If so, get a letter from his GP over to the assessment provider and request one. The assessment provider does not always give in without a fight and will refuse a home visit if aggression was mentioned on the PIP2 form.

You could also try asking the AP what extra information they need in order for an award to be made without seeing your son - but I'm afraid members who have tried this have not had any success

The final option is to get your MP involved.

Contacting your MP

You can postpone this appointment if you need extra time - to get a letter from yout GP, for instance - but the claimant is allowed to do this only once. I must warn you that if you simply don't attend, the most likely outcome would be for your son's file to be returned to DWP and his claim closed. The DLA claim would also be closed


May I suggest that you bookmark/favourite this on your web browser now so that you can find it easily in future? This will allow you to return with further questions or comments about your ESA without having to start a new topic each time. We ask members to keep everything relating to the same claim in one topic as it helps us enormously - and I hope you will find it useful too

I thought I would update. I spoke to ATOS who initially said they needed a GP letter to authorise extra time to prepare my son for the medical. I saw the GP without my son as he refused to attend who commented that the situation was ridiculous considering if I even get him there he can't answer their questions and might or might not comply with their requests and so told me to tell them to contact her. She said that she would point out the stupidity of the situation and direct them to the comprehensive set of reports that I supplied from a team of health professionals to support his claim.
I phoned ATOS with GP's request to contact her and seemed to speak to someone else who is now going to attempt to action his claim without a face to face as she believes it would cause him too much stress and he is unlikely to be helpful anyway and would contact us again with any further questions. So hopefully we can avoid the trauma of the assessment anyway.

Thanks for the update Mutty. Fingers crossed for you.

Well today was the day of my son's assessment. It lasted a full hour which I'm not sure whether it's a good or bad thing really. The assessor seemed ok but I'm not sure he had much understanding of autism or selective mutism or sensory processing difficulties which I suppose is typical but not helpful .He'd not read the reports we had sent which makes a mockery of the reason we were told that our son had to be seen (to explore issues raised in the reports) as he said he would read them afterwards.
Our son is somewhat traumatised by it all if I'm honest and it will take a good few days before he's back on an even keel again.
We were honest and truthful about the difficulties he faces which are huge so don't feel we could do much more . The guides were really helpful and ensured that we considered all angles so now we have the dreaded wait for the brown envelope to contend with