Serious concerns are being raised about the way the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is being administered.

Unless you are disabled, you may not know about PIP. It is part of the government’s reshaping of the welfare system and is currently being piloted in the North of England before being rolled out across the whole of the UK in June. PIP is intended to help with some of the extra costs caused by long-term ill-health or a disability, it is paid to disabled people in work or out of work, and by 2015 will have totally replaced Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – itself introduced by the last Conservative government in 1992.

But research by the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), a group of over 60 charities including the National Aids Trust,  MS Society and Mind has revealed worrying discrepancies in how the benefit is being administered.

Rather than administer the benefit as part of the public sector, the government has outsourced the contract to 2 private companies – Atos and Capita.  And at the heart of the matter is the medical assessment that everyone has to undergo if they claim this benefit.

Atos and Capita each conduct the medical assessments in their own way and have their own plans.  The DBC research found:

• Matching claimants with the right assessors – Capita says it will match claimants with particular conditions to assessors with that specific expertise, though only ‘where possible’.  Atos, on the other hand, allocates assessors randomly, which means they may have little or no knowledge of a specific medical condition.
• Home visits and scheduling of appointments :  Capita gives claimants a choice of a home visit or a centre based assessment, and a choice of possible dates and times (they aim to offer home assessments to around 60% of claimants). Atos, however, will only offer assessments at home to applicants who meet a range of criteria set out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and by and large they offer a predetermined appointment slot and require the claimant to change it if it is not suitable.

The importance of this assessment process cannot be over estimated. As Tom Pollard, DBC co-chair and Senior Policy Officer from mental health charity, Mind says

,” the way assessments are delivered is vital. We often hear of applicants’ health deteriorating further as a result of a poorly delivered assessment.”

Assessors with specialist knowledge are vital says Sarah Radcliffe, Policy and Campaigns Manager at the National AIDS Trust,.

“HIV is a very complex condition and is not always well understood by generalist medical practitioners.  DLA, even at lower levels, currently helps people with HIV maintain their health by accessing the extra support they need for their physical and mental wellbeing.   We have seen with the Work Capability Assessment that inadequate training in HIV has lead Atos assessors to overlook very serious health problems in decisions which are eventually overturned at appeal.   NAT urges both providers of the PIP assessment to match applicants living with HIV to assessors who have detailed knowledge of their condition where possible and also ensure that all assessors have a good basic knowledge of HIV.”

For more information on the campaign to improve the administration of PIP contact DBC.