Neurological and Musculoskeletal training

GEOFFREY REYNOLDS made this Freedom of Information request to Department for Work and Pensions This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was refused by Department for Work and Pensions.

GEOFFREY REYNOLDS

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,
Please explain the depth of training that a nurse working for ATOS, needs to attain to overturn a fully qualified specialists decision that a claimant is unfit for work, whilst carrying out an ESA examination?

1/ Please list the level of qualification attained?

2/ Please state the list of organisations that recognise the ATOS qualifications?

3/ Please state the length of training done to achieve the qualifications?

4/ Has the training been done in a medical environment utilising human beings or was it done within a classroom environment?

5/ Were the trainees paid whilst training?

6/ How many trainees failed to acquire the relevant qualifications?

7/ Please indicate how many trainees came from outside the uk?

8/ Were any kind of settlement/moving fees paid to nurses or doctors that came from outside the uk?

9/ If it was, who paid the fees?

10/ Would the qualifications enable the HCPs to enter practise within the NHS?

11/ Are ATOS HCPs ever reprimanded for finding too many claimants unfit for work?

Yours faithfully,
GEOFFREY REYNOLDS

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DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence, Department for Work and Pensions

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Reynolds

Please see your FOI response attached

Kind regards

Health & Disability Assessments (Operations)/Department for Work and Pensions/Room 306/Block 31/Norcross/Norcross Lane/Blackpool/FY5 3TA

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GEOFFREY REYNOLDS

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Work and Pensions's handling of my FOI request 'Neurological and Musculoskeletal training'.

As you have tried to bunch my questions together and given no information to what i asked, i am asking for an internal review.

With regard to number one, please state the accreditation achieved?

With regard to number two, please list the organisations that recognise the HCPs accreditation?

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ne...

Yours faithfully,

GEOFFREY REYNOLDS

DWP freedom-of-information-requests, Department for Work and Pensions

This is an automated confirmation that your request for information has
been accepted by the DWP FoI mailbox.

By the next working day your request will be forwarded to the relevant
information owner within the Department who will respond to you direct. 

If your email is a Freedom of Information request you can normally
expect a response within 20 working days.

Should you have any further queries in connection with this request do
please contact us.

For further information on the Freedom of Information Act within DWP
please click on the link below.

[1]http://www.dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-informa...

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References

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1. http://www.dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-informa...

DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence, Department for Work and Pensions

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Reynolds

Please see your FOI response attached

Kind regards

Health & Disability Assessments (Operations)/Department for Work and Pensions/Room 306/Block 31/Norcross/Norcross Lane/Blackpool/FY5 3TA

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GEOFFREY REYNOLDS (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Therefore, the only person that recognises the qualification of an ATOS HCPs qualifications is BILL GUNNYEON, Chief medical officer of your department...........................

One man only, whilst everyone else recognises them as charlatans doing the dirty work of the infamous, DWP.

Read the following story:

Medical assessments of benefit applicants at Atos Healthcare were designed to incorrectly assess claimants as being fit for work, one of the company's former senior doctors has claimed.

Greg Wood, a GP who worked at the company as a senior adviser on mental health issues, said claimants were not assessed in an "even-handed way", that evidence for claims was never put forward by the company for doctors to use, and that medical staff were told to change reports if they were too favourable to claimants.

The doctor claimed he resigned in disgust at what was going on, saying that many doctors he had spoken to shared his concerns. "I think the Department for Work and Pensions is the real culprit here. It's the government training that makes Atos assessors do this."

The work capability assessment is used for the government's employment and support allowance, a benefit paid to those too sick to work. Wood said that the assessors were trained in such a way that they expected claimants to score too few points to qualify for ESA, and to award points "begrudgingly".

The attitude drilled into assessors "leans towards finding reasons not to award points", he claimed. The result was a bias against the disabled, he said.

Last year the British Medical Association called for the tests to be scrapped to prevent harm to the most vulnerable people in society. Wood said that although his contract with Atos had a confidentiality clause, he was breaking it in the "public interest". He told the Guardian: "In my experience [Atos assessors] are not free to make independent recommendations, important evidence is frequently missing or never sought in the first place, medical knowledge is twisted and points are often wrongly withheld through the use of an erroneously high standard of proof."

He said if Atos assessors "show deviation from the official line they are instructed to change the report. In about a quarter of assessments important documentary evidence such as the claimant's own GP assessment is missing but the assessments go ahead regardless."

Although work capability tests were introduced by Labour in 2008, the coalition has rapidly expanded their use.

Atos – which last year processed almost 20,000 incapacity benefit claimants a week – has faced criticism after it emerged that a third (37%) of decisions appealed against were successfully overturned.

There have also been repeated claims that people with terminal cancer have been denied benefits as a result of Atos assessments and that the company sets out to strip people of benefits by making the tests arduous and degrading.

Labour MP Tom Greatrex, who has campaigned for reforms to Atos and the fitness to work test, said: "These are very serious and shocking allegations which must be urgently looked at. I have written to the prime minister today asking him to personally order an investigation.

"Those who can work should be helped into employment through effective back-to-work schemes, and those who can't through illness or disability should be supported. It's about helping people, not hounding them. Based on the evidence of Dr Wood this system is failing us all in the worst possible way."