DLA Tribunal panel members

[bensmum2]

Went to dla tribunal with my friend yesterday for DLA for her Aspie son who also has OCD, Just wondered if anyone else has any experience > The panel members a gp, a lawyer and a person who was "disbility aware" didnt know what and IEP was, and even when explained ot them , they thought the hours awarded on it were for the whole weeka nd not each day, also the lawyer didnt seem to recognise seperation anxiety even though it had been talked about several times during the tribunal , and the disability aware lady had to explain it to him. Surely although thes people are supposed to be unbiased, they cannot make informed decisions if they know nothing about the disability being discussed / Any ideas anyone ? Should they nto at least have a basic knowledge of the problems that can be associated with the dissability in question, we don't have an answer yet , but i was just wondering if anyone else had any experience, Thanks x

[LancsLad]

I think this is very much the sad reality of the system in general. Sucsesive goverments make policy decisions without understanding that the basic skills and knowledge simply isn't there to implement them in a fair way.

 

My partner who is a SENCO sits on one of these pannels in respect to decisions regarding levels of in school support. I know her to be conciencious and well clued up but she doesn't get paid to do this and has to ask for time off work. She has mixed feelings about some of the other panel members she comes across, I think her real concern is the political influences which come into play. In her opinion the same individual could have a very different outcome simply based on who provides the GP or School reports for example and their motives.

 

My personal experiences of assesments for DLA and Incapacity have been appaling. I get the feeling that this is simply too good an earner for people who make the decisions and nobody is checking on their experience or knowledge. AS someone with AS I have had to repeatedly had to deal with individuals whoose English has been very poor, and by this I mean they are unable to understand a strong and emotive emotional conversation, though I suspect their basic English will be OK. I have even had a doctor with a pretty full face of hair, beard and moustache which made it very difficult to read his expressions.

 

I have had allowances removed from me causing severe financial hardship only to have them overturned within two minutes of an appeal hearing. In this respect at this level of the process I do believe the pannel individuals concered do know there stuff and ultiumatly the right decisions will be made in the majority of cases. My real issue is that the default setting for these authorities is always we do not think you are entitled to anything. I am really concerned that a lot of individuals who are entitled to support simply walk away from the process as they can't face its stresses. My last succesfull apeal was in the middle of a university course in which i had invested around £20,000. I was very close to a complete nervous breakdown and my work really suffered. Without the support of the universities student services and their hardship fund I would not have been able to go through with the appeal in which the chair said he was embarrassed about it being in front of him. I dont think the individuals who take the responsibility lower down the process realise the effect their sloppy decisions can have.

 

Can understand your frustration but after time you become used to it to be honest.

[bensmum2]

^{Hi Thank you for replying, i have been helping people with Dla forms just as a personal fried for many years , i have only ever had one refusal and that was overturned after asking for the decision to be looked at again and i myself am registered blind and have been for 10 years, i got dla for 2 years at higher care rate then when i had to reapply they reduced it to lower, their reason was i must be used to ebing blind after 2 years !!! You should have heard my response to that, needless to say, once again that was overturned when i applied for a review.This tiem was for my friends aspie 16 year old, i applied last feb for them, they didnt turn it down till july and it didnt get changed at review so yesterday was the tribunal , there were 89 pages which they didnt evens eem to have read, one of the reasons for refusal was that he didnt get substantially more help at school than other children of his age, but he has an iep for 2 hours a day, plus extra support before and after school and at lounchtime, i argues that thta was substantially more and the panel said they thought it was 2 hours a week !! so even the disability aware lady didnt really seem to know how to read an iep. personally i foight for 8 years for my aspie son, now 16 to get into a special school, i went to tribunal over that and in our case notes there were 599 pages, it was really obvious that all panel members knew every single page and they were brilliant and asked for clarification of anythign they werent sure of.needless to say we won and he is now very happy in a class of 6 coming up to his gcse's, but this dla panel just really didnt seem to understand what we were talking about , we had spent ages talking about the child refusing to move without his mum and then when i summed up i just called it seperation problems, and one of them said what are seperation problems ! we still havent had a decision apparently it's "in the post" and they wont discuss it over the phone, but i was wondering if we do get refused, do i have any redress becasue the panel seemed totally clueless about asd ?}

[LancsLad]

I think a major issue here concerns implied status and the notion of experts. A lot of these individuals have to carry the banner of being a professional that I think is a very different concept to being an expert. Being professional is all about how you go about a process in a logical and hopefully impatial way. Unfortunatly I think a lot of professionals also think this implies they are an expert when in reality they may have very little if any knowledge on a particular area in question.

 

Without doubt the real experts are the subjects of the case themselves and their imediate family and friends who will have a real understanding of what their needs are. Handing over the responsibility of being the so called expert to someone who does not carry a professional qualification is very much counter to these individuals culture. Often another barrier between these two groups is language. A lot of professionals I have come across love their own language as a means to reinforcing their own status. What they do not then like is this game being turned back on them. I suspect when it comes to many case reviews around a complex area such the autistic spectrum the average adult be they a subject or a parent could run rings around the average medical / social services professional when it comes to the correct use of technical language.

 

The professional approach would be one of respectful positioning in taking the line please tell me what we could do to help you in your own very unique case. This position does not imply that we are going to be able to match all your needs but it is one of respectfully listening to individual cases. In my experience in contrast it is all about do you fit our all too rigid system and tick the boxes. Politically this is astute as I doubt anyone fits any of the assesment systems and for this reason the process is widely open to abuse which is wholly unprofessional. The sad thing is that the real expert, the individuals who have to deal with various conditiona are very poorly placed to hold these professionals to account when they are so much out of touch. I am amazed that I have yet to be asked whether I am happy with individuals who have been part of assesments and reviews yet I am supposed to be the client. I am also surprised that I have never had any of these sessions recorded as part of a monitoring process. On my next assesment I for one will be taking a digital dictaphone into the review as a matter of course should I need a recording of the conversation to use in evidence should the usual pattern continue of having to go to appeal.

 

Just a few thoughts.

[Mumble]

Should they nto at least have a basic knowledge of the problems that can be associated with the dissability in question

I suppose, just to play devil's advocate, it could be argued that it would be impossible for panel members to be expert, or even have a satisfactory level of knowledge in, all disabilities and health conditions they may come across. Additionally, DLA is awarded on the basis of needs not diagnosis, so the actual disability shouldn't come into it.

[bensmum2]

yes i agree diagnosis alone doesnt entitle one to DLA it is the degree of help they may need over and above anothe rperson of a simialr age and obviously the type of help, and i am not expecting them to be experts in all disabilities just to have basic knowledge of the problems people are likely to experience, or at least one of the panel members to have such knowledge x

[bensmum2]

i really appreciate your response to this , i love the littel 2thoughts" u put at the end , will post agein when we get the results should be today hopefully , win or lose i think i am going to question the qualifications of the dLA tribunal panel further x

[bensmum2]

well , my friends son got awarded lower mobility but no care, but better than nothing and they owe her over a year in benefit, its like they totally ignored his IEP and depression and ocd, but he is 16 now and his appeal was dealt with as if he were still 15 so now he us unable to make a main meal for himself comes into play , i have told my friend to get a new referral to camhs and then we will do a change of circumstances , all the Panel concentrated on was could he use the toilet and wash himself , didnt even take into account how much verbal help he needs with over washing and refusing to eat food he hasnt seen prepared and stuff liek that, but small success xx