No sleep and spitting feathers

OP if you are concerned about your stepdaughter's entitlement to benefits, you can check using an online benefits checker such as EntitledTo. It's an easy thing to do.

May put your mind at rest!

Pammie1 Thanks for your informative post. I was far more ignorant than I knew!

I do agree with Mariema though and today it was reported that "Top Bosses" will earn more in 3 days than average workers will earn in the whole of 2020. We live in an unequal world.

www.scotsman.com/business/top-bosses-earn-more-in-three-days-than-average-workers-will-in-all-of-2020-1-5070149

@endlessstrife. No, she was on DLA until she was migrated onto PIP by the DWP and the DLA claim was ended. PIP is a different benefit, with different, much stricter qualifying criteria from DLA, calling for clearer medical evidence, and she simply didn’t qualify. She lost all entitlement and eventually went to tribunal appeal where she lost her case. Technically she still has the condition but unlike DLA, PIP measures the impact of the condition, and not the condition itself and the tribunal agreed with the DWP, that there was no significant impact on her life because the seizures had stopped.

Thousands of claimants were in a similar situation and DWP knew it was happening - there were fewer checks and DLA awards tended to be for much longer periods. Once PIP was introduced it was inevitable that the new criteria would pick up these cases and either reduce or end the claims.

It remains a very controversial benefit and as previously stated it has had teething problems and there are ongoing problems with, among other things the utilisation of NHS staff other than qualified physicians as assessors, inevitably leading to poor quality assessments and issues surrounding the availability/procurement of medical evidence. DLA was intended to support those living with a disability which had enough impact to incur significant extra cost. There were a number of different levels of award and inevitably it became massively expensive. PIP was designed to support those in most need by tightening up the rules and ensuring that those people who qualify actually do incur extra cost at some level, and can supply supporting medical evidence to that end. Some saw it as a cynical move to reduce numbers but where do you draw the line ? If there are limited funds they should go to the people who actually need them,

.Pammiel what happened to the lady with epilepsy? Did she have to pay everything back? Was she prosecuted?

@M0nica. ‘I dealt with people who thought they should be entitled to the benefit because they had mild arthritis or similar.but again this has nothing to do the DLA, because such people if they insisted on applying for DLA got turned down.’

But in my experience lot of people with low impact conditions DID end up with awards under DLA and from there, the sense of ‘entitlement’ takes over and improvement and recovery are seldom reported. PIP is much harder to claim and claimants have to back up their claims with hard evidence. Awards tend to be for much shorter periods, and yes lower than under DLA. You interpret this as a political move to reduce numbers, and while I think there is some truth to that, you can’t really argue but that this approach ensures that the claimants condition actually impacts their daily life, and that benefit is either reduced or stopped promptly where conditions have either improved or claimants have recovered. As previously stated the system is very far from ideal but it’s all we have to work with, and incidentally, I don’t remember much ‘public outrage’ about any aspect of PIP. Public apathy and a media campaign branding all disabled claimants as scroungers made it easier to introduce PIP in the first place - at one point the coalition government were trying to pin the financial crisis on benefit claimants !

It’s really not enough to say that the claimant is responsible for reporting change, the DWP have a responsibility to the tax payer to make sure claimants are entitled to benefit. In the context of this thread how is someone in the position of the OPs daughter any different from someone who has recovered from an illness but still claims the benefit ?

I'd take the easy route: tell people I know - tell my neighbours, the shop workers, friends, family - anyone I know. If she's not doing anything wrong, no problem. If she is, then anyone could dob her in it.

ExD1938 PIP stands for Personal Independence Payment.

I'm thick. What does PIP stand for?

Pammie1 I appreciate the point, but the lady concerned didn't get DLA on the basis of her condition alone, she got it because, at the time it was granted, the condition affected her life. That she did not report that her condition had improved and she was no longer in need of it, was entirely her decision. The DLA should have checked, but the onus is on the recipient to report their improvement. If the Benefits Agency had known the benefit would have been stopped.

I dealt with people who thought they should be entitled to the benefit because they had mild arthritis or similar.but again this has nothing to do the DLA, because such people if they insisted on applying for DLA got turned down.

The purpose of the transfer to PIP was a political plan to reduce the number of disabled people on benefit. The company to whom the contract was first given, had quotas and incentive schemes for the doctors doing the asessments, the less PIPs they granted the more they were paid.

Eventually the appeal rate and public outrage led to them being 'sacked for not doing the work properly', in fact they were the scapegoats for doing exactly what the minister instructed them to do.

'worthy'

This is classic 'divide and conquer' tactics. Let's keep the working classes fighting among themselves. If you want to get annoyed at a fraudulent, cheating, lying, blond in their fifties, a more worth target is Boris Johnston.

Sorry if I caused offence to anyone when trying to explain part of a very complicated benefit application process - PIP. I have been part of various campaign groups since the benefit was introduced and have helped dozens of people with their claims through working with a local disability charity. I have Spina Bifida and am confined to a wheelchair, and having been migrated to PIP from a life award of DLA myself, I do know how difficult the benefit is to claim - I appreciate that the the assessment process is flawed, as evidenced by the amount of mandatory reconsideration letters I have helped write, but having campaigned vigorously for change I realise it’s not going to happen and you have to work within the confines of the existing benefit rules, which necessitates the use of the tribunal process a lot more to get the right decision. You also have to accept, as I have that the DLA system was in need of change, as it was becoming unsustainable. Unfortunately PIP was designed by people with little or no personal experience of disability and not much consultation with those who do, so definitely not ideal, but at present the only system we have.

@M0nica. You misinterpreted my differentiation between a disability and a health condition - of course I don’t dispute that someone who has had an accident can be left with permanent disability - just as much as someone with a birth defect disability for example, but in my experience, I have come across people who have conditions which have very little impact on their day to day lives, who have been very angry at being turned down for various benefits and their reasoning has been a sense of entitlement - that simply the fact that they have the condition should qualify them. One example is a lady with epilepsy. She had not had a seizure in over fifteen years and had been taken off medication some years earlier and discharged by her consultant. She was outraged when, on migration from DLA to PIP, she lost all entitlement, as she had been on the higher rate of both daily living and mobility components of DLA. She had failed to notify DLA of the improvement in her condition and her subsequent removal from medication and discharge from her consultant’s care, and had carried on claiming the benefit even though her ‘condition’ had no impact on her life. The change to PIP addressed this, and in my view was correct. I have seen dozens of similar cases where people with low impact, non permanent conditions which qualified them for some award of DLA, have failed to report recovery or improvement and have just carried on regardless with their claim. This is what I mean by the difference between health condition and disability. The PIP system is very far from ideal but it was introduced with the intention of saving money and has picked up a lot of what is actually low level fraud and to that end has been successful. And as with DLA, PIP actually DOES differentiate between health condition and disability in that the claimants’ condition has to have existed for at least three months before applying and expected to last at least a further nine months after. With the introduction of PIP, the word ‘disability’ was taken out of the name of the benefit altogether, with the stated intention of making it more accessible, notably to those with mental health conditions who did not traditionally qualify for the mobility component of DLA. In my experience however, very few claimants with mental health conditions receive any consideration for this component unless they are under psychiatric care.

Finally, it’s been suggested that there is a list of conditions which automatically qualify claimants for PIP. There was a comprehensive list of conditions which could receive an award under DLA without the need for a face to face assessment, but this was scrapped when PIP replaced DLA for those of working age. If there is such a list now for PIP I would be grateful if someone could point me to it because on numerous occasions, in their responses to reconsideration requests on behalf of claimants, DWP have stressed that there is NO condition which automatically qualifies a claimant and that every case is individually decided on the impact of the condition - NOT the condition itself. As previously stated, the only exception currently to my knowledge is fast track applications for those with a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Again, it was not my intention to cause offence - we’re somewhat off-topic, but the issue of fraud is relevant here too.

Not necessarily, women who look after themselves can look good for a very long time. I know, my friends are round this age and look fantastic!

Yes, mental heath issues are being taken into account more, but I do think its based very much on what you can physically do.

So, you may well be able to walk the length of 5 buses, but if you're absolutely crippled with anxiety then you're unlikely to be able to do it.

Pammie1 my Son did fill in the forms with the help of the CAB and were sent off. The letter for the asessment date never arrived and the mobile phone number they said they phoned has never been a number of his. The CAB helped with the appeal and it will go to a tribunal hopefully in May this year. As with DLA if you look on the website there is a list of life limiting illnesses or disabilities which should automatically considered for PIP and his is one. In the press today it was saying that with the change to PIP 48% of claimants have been denied or had the amount due greatly reduced. As people can get DLA for children with ADHD etc. I would think they will will all be losing the benefit when they are changed to PIP.

I thought it probably was. Livlass

We rented rooms once to a young woman who lived on benefits including her rent. There was nothing visibly wrong with her but she could have had mental or other health problems - would that qualify her? She did not work and had no dependents.
We had a council inspection so I presume everything was above board.
She left to live with her boyfriend and moved abroad. We have lost touch. She was rather mysterious.

Unfortunately this thread is completely true.

If its a wind up its a good one, its got me hooked!
We have a similar thing happening down the road from us - someone on disability allowance, or whatever its called. She has every benefit going - up to and including an adapted car which is changed for new every 2 or 3 years.
But last summer she was fit enough to do 3 bungee jumps from a crane in the car park of a local pub.
I'm beginning to wonder how much of this thread is true too.

Her dad must be a good age.?
When do we parents ever get peace from agro.......

The book form to fill out even had a question on whether you had any money at home, though I'm not sure its still on there.

As far as I can see, having read the regulations, anything HMRC deem to be income, is income. Income received regularly is treated as income for benefit calculation purposes.

Her father could get round it by paying it out to her in used bank notes, which means there would be little trace of it to be picked up.

*So, supposing her father was really wealthy and gave her £400 a week.

Is it still ok for her to claim everything she can without saying a word?*

This is effectively what I am asking. We don't know, do we? I assume that £400 a week, which is nearly £21000 a year, would push the stepdaughter's savings to over the limit, unless the treatments on her long blonde hair are hideously expensive, so yes, they would be taken into account.

This whole thread has got to be a wind-up, surely?

That is interesting, Barmeyoldbat. So presumably there is a cut-off figure for parental gifts. That would make sense, and it would make a massive difference to the credibility of this thread if we knew what the OP's husband was supposedly giving his daughter.

I gave my son allowance but it was only £50 a week while he was waiting for his UC to be processed. The DWP accepted this as OK.

So, supposing her father was really wealthy and gave her £400 a week.

Is it still ok for her to claim everything she can without saying a word?

I’d go to prison too, because I kept quiet!!

I feel as though I've fallen through the looking glass. A woman is given 'an allowance' by her own father, and you seriously think that anyone not reporting this to the DWP would go to prison? We don't live under the Stasi.

How much is this allowance? If there is a rule that forbids parents giving gifts to children, there must be a cut-off amount, or hypothetically a cup of tea could be counted, which I'm sure even the most punitive would think was ridiculous? The OP has been very short on detail - we don't know whether her husband is giving his daughter £5 a month or £500 a week, and either would constitute 'an allowance'.

I understand that savings have to be declared, so if the allowance pushes the SD's savings above the allowance (and it goes into her bank account) then it would have the potential to take her out of benefits. Personally, I think that this is a poverty trap that discourages self-reliance (save any nest-egg and it will be taken from you when you really need it - squander your money and you can claim), but savings are not allowed under the rules.

Maybe all charitable donations to alleviate poverty should be diverted to overseas causes, as if people on this thread are right, charity can no longer begin at home.