I was a Personal Independent Payment (PIP) Disability Assessor (DA) for about 6 months, after leaving the ambulance service; which is about the average for Paramedics in this role!
It was a complete culture shock to all my systems; having gone from working day and night shift, where Christmas is just about day, to a Monday to Friday job. It took and still is taking a long time to break the shift and habits; of not eating regularly, sleep patterns which no longer exist in my world, to have weekends again and being able to plan things! Even after 5 years or so, my body is still struggling to shift itself into some kind of normality.
The PIP DA role was the worst job you could ever give a paramedic!
At the time I was a DA, a company called Atos Healthcare had the contract to deliver the PIP assessments and subsequent reports for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to make the final decisions on awarding or not. I worked for a company which was employed by Atos to do exactly this.
New job, week 1, day 1 of becoming a Disability Assessor was working at home, doing online training... this was for the whole of week one and way before anyone had heard of COVID19. Eleven modules completed, all passed and will to live got up and went.
Week 2 and 3 of my DA role... 2 weeks of Disability Assessor PIP Consultation Training; at least I got to meet some of my colleagues, even though we weren't being trained at my base. Week 3, we had a new operations manager started; she came in as in she knew everything including more than the healthcare professionals on assessing. The best way to describe her was like one of those little yappy dog with a bone it won't let go of! She was not understanding, flexible or even a nice person... she had me in tears numerous times!
The kind of person my operations manager was like... I had to go to see my PTSD therapist on the orders of the police in relation to a horrific situation in relation to my (thankfully) ex fiance. The Officer in Charge (OIC) of my case needed information from my therapist by a deadline set by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and it all needed my consent and signature on it. I explained the situation to her and she said no as I hadn't given her the minimum 2 weeks notice for leave. I tried explaining the significance and importance of it, still a straight no! I had to get my OIC to confirm everything to her and he also explained that he would charge her with obstructing a police investigation, no surprises she agreed, but wasn't happy about it and made my life hell after it, but I didn't care! This was normal for all Disability Assessors, they didn't care about us, they just needed our registrations; the claimants and assessors were all treated as an annoyance but a necessity to make money!
To explain all of the training properly, I was going to do it all in one go, but I now think that doing them in separate blogs would be more helpful for you. So I'll do one here and now and the other modules of a DAs training will follow shortly; and hope this will give you a better insight in the Disability Assessor training.
There were eleven online training modules to complete, and a 2 week in person training course to be completed before becoming a Disability Assessor. I completed and passed all of my modules with flying colours.
Module One of the Online training to start my new role as a DA. Module... PIP Process, Claimant Journey, DWP & Atos HCPs (Healthcare Professionals). The outcome purpose of the module was to fully understand the PIP journey from application to the award benefit being made or not (nothing about decisions being appealed and so forth). The only bit which was targeted for DAs was understanding your role in the PIP process. Tick, passed, next!
The elements involved in this module were understanding the background to the introduction of PIP; the process involved in delivering PIP; and understanding the role of DWP in developing and delivering PIP. The final and most useful element was understanding your role in the PIP process (yes process is used a lot through the training).
The reason for explaining the training is to highlight how it lacked in the common health conditions being assessed and lack of training on these. Plus to put the training into context as a registered Healthcare Professionals and what shills we took into the DA role and had used for numerous years prior to becoming a DA; but also how these skills didn't fit into the DA role.
This module was useful to understand and gain knowledge of how the Personal Independent Payment system works... or not depending on your experience of it!