IAS, Appointee, Situational Mutism

So contacted IAS today to ask about the missed phone call on Friday. Confirmed that the telephone assessment would go ahead Wednesday (suspect it might not as Friday's call was to rearrange for today) They could obviously see that I am the appointee but said that my daughter would need to be present and confirm that I could answer for her. I explained that there are two issues here daughter has situational mutism and cannot speak on the phone or to people she doesn't know and won't be able to even say yes. She has speech therapy for this issue but speaking on a telephone is a long way off. The second issue is that she can't bear to be in the room when I'm on the phone such is her difficulties with social interaction. To illustrate with a farcical situation, I'm partially sighted needed to book a repair for the cooker. I phone. d hides in her room as soon as I mention needing to make a call. Person on phone needs serial number, I can't see the number, d couldn't come into the kitchen to read it to me whilst I'm on the phone so had to put down phone so that d could come downstairs read out serial number that I wrote big enough to be able to see . Then d goes back to hide in her room so that I can call again about the repair. Person on phone said I would need to see whether assessor would continue without d being there. Is there any regulations regarding this? I am her appointee, UC accepted that she couldn't be present and it wasn't a problem with UC50 assessment either. If IAS refuse what can I do?

That won't change anything though as d won't be able to come out of her room or be able to speak. DWP came here to see her for her UC ID check as she can't go to Job Centre, they didn't have a problem that d couldn't come downstairs and as I said WCA wasn't a problem either, I explained about the situational mutism and the difficulties with social interaction and it went ahead without a problem. I thought as appointee it wouldn't be a problem that d wouldn't be able to speak.

Hello Donna,

I agree with Gary - it ought not to be a problem, it's just that IAS make it so. I am an appointee for my autistic son and, so far, we have had two assessments with IAS. Each time, their letters have stated my son must be present and speak for himself. The first time (which was a face-to-face assessment at home), I rang them to explain the situation, but they still insisted and we had to make very complicated arrangements to enable him to be present, as he was away at university at the time, but cannot travel alone. The second time (which was a telephone assessment) I felt calling them in advance to explain would not be worthwhile, so I just accepted that my son must be there, but I don't think the assessor was expecting this because when I answered the phone, I got the impression that it was me the assessor was expecting to take the call. Unfortunately, we'd put the call on speaker-phone in order to record it, so I wasn't able to indicate quickly enough to my son that he shouldn't speak and, once he'd said "Hello" (unprompted, for once!) and thus confirmed his presence, she wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. My son tends to minimise his own problems, but also got really confused by all the questions and, at one point, started telling the assessor about my mobility problems instead. Not helpful.

I don't really feel able to tell you what you should do, but next time, unless the assessment procedure has changed (which it well might), I shall arrange for my son to be at home, just in case, but shall tell him to stay in another room unless they insist on speaking to him. Of course, this is different to your situation, as your daughter cannot speak, but I feel that is all the more reason the assessor should agree to speak to you alone. After all, they want to get the assessment done, as well.

I'm sorry, I don't know if any of this is helpful, I just hoped maybe you might learn from my mistakes!

Good luck - I hope it goes well for you.

Best wishes,

Wendy

Thank you I'm just going to carry on as I intended regardless of what the receptionist says. It wasn't a problem for DWP or CHADA so I will plead ignorance. If it's a problem I will ask them to rearrange whilst I get the SALT to write confirming d is unable to speak and see what they intend to do about it then. I don't understand all the rigmarole around being made appointee by DWP if IAS then decide that they want the person deemed needing an appointee to represent themselves.