can anyone offer me some advice with this? my 19 year old has had indefinite DLA at highest rates for care and mobility for 6 years, recived higher rate DLA since 9 years old and 10 weeks ago we got letter saying he needed to go onto PIP. well i filled in the dratted form where we have to reflect on the worse parts of our amazing kids and can't celebrate what they have acheived, dutifully sent it back and then reecived letter saying he would need a PIP assessment. early in November someone arrived at our house to carry this out but we hadn't had a letter so son was in school and I was at work, luckily a friend had dropped in with shopping for me and spoke to this person. I then spent 4 hours the next day on the DWP phone line to get a human to speak to me about this. sad to say i did use my status as an education inspector to insist they re looked at his case. i then rang DWP every 3 days for 4 weeks until they finally said his case was again eligible for PIP assessment and his DLA would not be stopped. for 3 weeks I rang ATOS every 3 days asking when the appointment would be so i could arrnge my work diary and inform his school. Well we finally got a date, but not for home assessment but in our City centre. My son was totally freaked out as we do not go into the city centre as traffic, noise etc distresses him as does new places and strangers. we survived journey and then had to wait 45 mins as "they were running late". by the time we were called in my son was stressed out totally and close to tears. assessor must have been 25 at most, nice irish lady but totally out of her depth. i queried her ASD experience and she told me she was a registerd nurse who had dealt with children with learning difficulties and adults with mental health issues. At that point I knew where this was going. my son refused to engage with her just stimmed and became increasingkly stressed and tearful. At one point her shouted out he had had enough of this and asked me to get him out of here. so unlike him as he has perfect taught manners and is seldom aggressive. she adrressed her questions to me but all around his care needs and not his mobility. I felt she totally got he is totally not abel to care for himself but feel she deliberatly skirted the mobility issue. all she asked me was " does he understand pedestrian crossing signals", well ye DOH he does but he never goes out alone and holds an adults arm if there is a road to cross. He has had a statement of SEND since he was 3 but did she check his mental imparement? nope just asked him 5 computer generated questions to test his mental reasoning and thank goodness he did get 3 wrong. so after a dreadful 3 hours in that place we now fully expect them to try and remove his mobility grant and reduce his care componet. roll on the appeal. Any advice would be most welcome on what I need to prepare etc. sorry for the rant and thank you for reading
