Help please with pip mr

Hi everyone. Sorry for the long post but I’ve just received a copy of the assessor’s report for my PIP assessment and it doesn’t look as if I will be awarded any points. I suffer from quite a few mental health issues and have done since I was a child. I feel upset by what this woman has written. She stated that my speech was normal in flow and content, I had good eye contact, my mood was stable and I required no support or prompting from my husband. These are all things I disagree with and will put in my mandatory reconsideration. The main areas I was hoping to score points on was preparing food, taking nutrition, washing and bathing, dressing and undressing, and engaging with others face to face. Looking at the preparing food activity for instance, I put on my pip form that my husband cooks five days of the week as I’m either too preoccupied by my obsessions (I have OCD) or feel too depressed after binge eating (I have an eating disorder). When I do cook my husband is with me to chivvy me along and to check I’m not getting side-tracked by my OCD. To me that would suggest I need prompting to either prepare or cook a simple meal. I answered the other activities in a similar vein and yet it looks like I’m set to score nothing. I have attached a copy from the assessor’s report covering the preparing food question and wondered if anyone had any advice as to how I could argue my case. I do not feel I can carry out this activity reliably as it cannot be done repeatedly as I rely on my husband most of the time to cook and it’s never in a reasonable time period because of either my OCD or depression. However, I’m not sure I fulfil the safety and acceptable standard aspect to satisfy the DWP’s definition of ‘reliably’. Do all 4 aspects have to be covered? Below is the part of the assessor’s report which covers preparing food. Here again she has either told lies or been economical with the truth. I did say I could cook a simple meal but only with my husband’s help and supervision. I also said I relied on snacks and drank from bottles during the day because I was either too depressed or too preoccupied with my OCD to be bothered with anything else. With regards to what she says about medication I said that I didn’t want it changed unless I was going to get mental health support to do as I’ve been on it for over 20 years (I’m only under my GP at the moment which doesn’t help my case I suppose). I also never said the medication was effective. I really would be indebted to anyone who could help me as all this is making my eating disorder and OCD worse.

Thanks for your reply Gordon. The advice is much appreciated. I’m probably being a bit thick here but I thought saying about my depression and OCD would be reasons to show I cannot always cook. I’m also not sure what you mean by inconsistencies? Do you mean it seems contradictory that sometimes I’m depressed and then other times I’m busy with my obsessions? I’d be grateful if you could make this clearer for me as it may be a big reason as to why I look set to fail PIP.

You can't really do anything until a Decision has been made and you have received notice of this.

Reading your post there appears to be some inconsistencies as to how you describe your problems, it certainly suggests that you can complete the activities on occasion and there does not appear to be any clear reason why cannot do them.

For example, for Preparing Food, you say that your husband prepares a meal five days a week but your reasons for your not doing so do not seem to be directly related to the activity. I'm not suggesting that you can but your need to explain why you cannot specifically. Also the fact that you can prepare a meal two days a week weakens your case as you do not seen to have an explanation of why you can on these days and not on others.

The people assessing you lack imagination and you need to spell out your restrictions in simple terms; I can't do A, I can't do it because of condition Z, it effects me in this way, I am effected X days a week on the other days I am restricted to Y degree. Aids or help from another person, allow / do not allow me to complete the activity.

You need to be able to complete the activities reliably and on the majority of days not to score points. Reliably requires you to have problems with at least one of the terms included under this heading. The PIP Claim guide explains this in more detail. See

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip

If you do have to request a Mandatory Reconsideration then the first stage is to write to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim, have a look at our PIP MR & Appeal guide for details of the process, the PIP area also has template letters that you can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip

Your primary task is to show that you meet the criteria, there are many reasons you may have failed, you need to address each of these but don't get bogged down in criticising the assessment report unless you can clearly show that it is incorrect, it is a lot easier to argue the facts of the situation;

"the assessor recorded that I walked 50m, I did but they have failed to document that I had to stop every 10m for a rest due to breathlessness"

than their opinions

"based on my observations of the claimant walking I believe that they can reliably walk more than 200m.

When you have a better idea of the issues with your claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

Gordon[/quote]

Many thanks for your help. I did not take what you said the wrong way at all. I’m grateful for the honest feedback.