Blind people and the support group

I thought it would be helpful to start a thread for people to post success or not, thoughts and anything else regarding the progress of blind people into the support group following the reccent new guidance on interpretation of the communication descriptor 7 (see news section).
I know this has been started on another thread but as the title relates to braille I thought a more focused thread would be good.
Fantastic news on your entry to the support group terminal6 . Was this at your initial WCA or at appeal??

I used to be an adviser with RNIB, and I spoke to quite a few clients on this point. This is just my non-scientific impression from those conversations, but I think there is a difference in outcome, depending on whether you are claiming ESA from the start, or are an IB conversion case.

Almost everyone on the 'ordinary' ESA route seems to have a face-to-face medical (and many people are waiting 8 months or more). I know of quite a few blind people on IB who were converted to ESA on the basis of the ESA50, on the papers only. However, these people were invariably placed in the work-related group.

On the other hand, I've also spoken to blind people (with no other disability) who attended a medical as part of their IB to ESA conversion, and a handful have gone into support group straight off.

There are also quite a few more I know of who appealed the WRAG decision (whether 'ESA50 only' or after a medical) and were successfully placed in support group on reconsideration. I don't know of anyone who has yet gone as far as tribunal hearing to get in support group.

For those people who have been put in the support group, I'm not sure what activity/descriptor has been applied ...
most people get the decision and decide not to rock the boat or ask too many questions


I also posted on the previous thread that Ash has referred to. To repeat quickly, I think the LCW test (to get 15 points) and LCWRA test (support group) are very different in the way they consider the 'understanding communication' activity -- you can score points in LCW with sight loss or hearing loss alone, but the wording of LCWRA seems to require you to have problems with both verbal and non-verbal communication to go into the support group on the communication activity.
Maybe those blind people who have been put in support group got it on the basis of some other LCWRA activity/descriptor ? awareness of hazard ?

Hi,

See previous thread here :

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/forum?func=vie...id=10&id=80520#80520

bro58