benifit medical

Peter

The DWP's position is that all of their assessors are trained in Disability Assessment to a standard set by them and that there is no specific requirement for the assessor to have direct experience of the claimants conditions for them to be able to carry out an effective review. Clearly there are internal "rules" which dictate that more senior assessors should be used for certain conditions (this is likely why your son's assessor left the room), but this is not of itself sufficient to argue that the assessment was invalid.

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you to request a Mandatory Reconsideration, this needs to be done in writing to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim, have a look at our ESA MR & Appeal guide for details of the process and template letters that you can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/esa1

You should contact the DWP for a copy of the assessment report, it's referred to as an ESA85,if you have not already done so, I would phone them but again follow up the request in writing. Once you have the assessment report you will have a better understanding of how the DWP Decision Maker has come to their conclusions and will then be able to argue against them.

Your primary task is to show that your son meets the criteria for an ESA award, there are many reasons he 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, in context to this it is a lot easier to argue the facts of the situation;

"the assessor recorded that your son walked 50m, he did but they have failed to document that he 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

peter wrote: son placed in work related group

A tentative congratulations, was this what you hoped for?

Gordon