Complaint to the independent case examiner

Hello everyone

I hope you are all well. I thought I would update you on where we are at the moment...

Quick resume for those people who haven't been with me through the whole journey 😂

I applied for PIP on behalf of my adult son with ADHD, the health assessment report was littered with inaccuracies and errors and he was awarded 0 points. For MR we provided additional medical evidence (15 pages of it) yet he still got 0 points based largely still on the inaccurate health assessor's report. We appealed to the tribunal and at that point the DWP changed their decision and awarded him enhanced daily living and standard mobility. So...we complained to capita about their report on the basis that it did not present an accurate picture of his difficulties.

Their initial response was fairly brief and basically said that as there had not been a recording of the assessment (we did request one but they didn't record it) they could not prove or disprove our claims. There were clearly several inaccuracies in the health assessor's report that could be easily proven, for example, she stated that there was no medical evidence of poor working memory yet the clinical psychologist stated his working memory was on the 13th percentile. The health assessor said he had never been diagnosed with dyslexia but there was a diagnosis report stating he had dyslexia. She stated that he had been discharged from his specialist clinic so no longer needed the support but the letter she quoted was a request for shared care not a discharge. These points and others were easily provable.

So...we asked them to review their response to our complaint. Which they did, and they acknowledged that the initial response was not good and this time they wrote a 10 page letter which basically just summarised my complaint. However, they did not address the actual complaint which was about the provable inaccuracies in the original health assessor's report. So, for example, when I had pointed out that the health assessor's assertion that my son did not have a poor working memory was clearly false, the response from capita was merely to state that she would have read all the documents provided before the assessment and, hopefully, that reassured us that it had all been taken into account!!!

Anyway...I have been thinking about it and yesterday I wrote to the independent case examiner (who works for the DWP!!) to relook at the complaint. I dithered about doing it, but thought that we had nothing to lose. My aim really is to get someone to admit that the health assessor's report did not present a true reflection of my son's difficulties and that it was inaccurate and contained several factual errors. That way, when he comes to have a review we can ask for that assessment to be ignored.

So, fingers' crossed 😃🤞

Anji

If you’re going all in, it may also be worth enquiring why the independent case manager is not actually independent?

Seriously though, well done Anji.