Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi I was just wondering how other autistic adults have found the PIP experience? Has anyone been successful in getting PIP? How did you explain your struggles? I got my decision today and they said I don’t qualify. Any help would be appreciated thank you
Everything you write when you fill in the pip form has to be backed-up with medical evidence.Supporting evidence is needed as we could all write write anything on the form.They award points based on proof.
It doesn’t help before I only got diagnosed in April so hadn’t seen anyone about my autism until then cos I didn’t know I was autistic. So what medical evidence do you send in?
Proof, medical evidence!
That's just it. It is very difficult to get proof of mental or social disabilities, physical disabilities are obvious, but mental ones, they think we are just making up our problems.
At my pip application I submitted evidence from my previous employer who dismissed me at a formal disciplinary hearing making the point that my communication and behaviour problems were so severe making me unemployable. I still received zero pip points. All evidence was ignored.
What do you mean by medical evidence? You can get PIP without any medical diagnosis (although I accept it’s more difficult) and be turned down for PIP despite having multiple medical diagnoses. Supporting evidence certainly helps but it can be from friends, family, carers etc as opposed to a medical professional. I managed to get the basic care component of PIP with just my diagnosis letter and no other supporting evidence. Where I will agree is you have to be specific and say that you can’t do the things that you get points for not being able to do. You can’t just supply a diagnosis and expect DWP to realise that because you are autistic you can’t do x,y and s. The forms are also biased towards physical disability and can take a bit of creative thinking to show ‘ explain why you can’t do some of the tasks you get points for.