Govt Green Paper on ESA and PIP

Everyday living
1

Have your say on the government’s Green Paper on ESA and PIP

Help get MSers exempt from form filling, begging doctors for medical evidence and humiliating face-to-face assessments.

Questions and extract from the Green paper:

​​"Building on our plans to exempt people with the most severe health conditions and disabilities from reassessment, how can we further improve the process for assessing financial support for this group?"

“Is there scope to improve the way the Department for Work and Pensions uses the evidence from Service Medical Boards and other institutions, who may have assessed service personnel, which would enable awards of benefit to be made without the need for the claimant to send in the same information or attend a face-to-face assessment?”

Link: Work, health and disability green paper: improving lives - GOV.UK

  1. We will also explore how the assessment process could use data already gathered by the NHS or local authorities where appropriate, to ensure people do not have to repeatedly provide the same information. There are inevitably important sensitivities around how an individual’s data is used, and Dame Fiona Caldicott’s review of data security and consent opt outs has explored how we achieve the right balance between protecting an individual’s data, and using it to improve services. 85 However, if we can strike the right balance, there is a valuable opportunity to create a more seamless journey for people with the most needs, using data in a way that improves their access to services, and promotes more integrated services.

Those with the most severe lifelong conditions

  1. Some people have been diagnosed with the most severe health conditions and disabilities from which they will never recover, and which require high levels of day-to-day care. People in these circumstances are likely to already have significant engagement with the NHS or social care services and in many cases they will already have had detailed and up-to-date NHS or local authority health or care assessments.

  2. As these people’s conditions are extremely unlikely to improve, we have recently announced that they will no longer be required to take part in reassessments and are engaging with experts to design the criteria for deciding to whom this should apply. They are still currently expected to take part in an initial Work Capability Assessment to determine if they should have access to increased financial support and to decide their access to employment support.

  3. We are therefore consulting on whether we should introduce a more appropriate process for people who have severe health conditions and disabilities, who represent a small proportion of those in the Employment and Support Allowance caseload. For instance, we could consider whether a simpler assessment process could be developed, that means that people do not need to provide as much information as required under the current system. It may be possible to achieve this, with an individual’s consent, by using data already held in the NHS to determine severity of condition and functional impact where this is appropriate.

  4. In order to test the feasibility of this approach we will be conducting a case review exercise in our Assessment Centres to determine whether a healthcare professional could have completed a shortened assessment process using, for example, pre-existing NHS or local authority evidence such as care plans to make their recommendation. This would avoid placing any further burdens on the individual to fill in additional questionnaires or attend a face-to-face assessment to determine their eligibility. As part of this and the data-sharing work, we are also looking at wider opportunities to reduce bureaucracy and improve individuals’ experiences of assessment processes.

Your views

  1. We want to hear from you about how we can make these processes work more effectively and seamlessly for individuals accessing financial support.
  • How might we share evidence between assessments, including between Employment Support Allowance/Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments to help the Department for Work and Pensions benefit decision makers and reduce burdens on claimants?
  • What benefits and challenges would this bring?
  • Building on our plans to exempt people with the most severe health conditions and disabilities from reassessment, how can we further improve the process for assessing financial support for this group?
  • Is there scope to improve the way the Department for Work and Pensions uses the evidence from Service Medical Boards and other institutions, who may have assessed service personnel, which would enable awards of benefit to be made without the need for the claimant to send in the same information or attend a face-to-face assessment?

Respond to this consultation online

https://consultations.dh.gov.uk/workandhealth/consult/consultation/

Best regards

PJ