HCP failings -
Dear Department for Work and Pensions,
The WCA Handbook for Atos HCPs is quite clear that all of the evidence brought by the claimant must be considered and logged in their report. They must also consider the ESA50 and where appropriate use all of this to inform the way in which they approach the WCA, the questions they ask and the tests they perform. A comprehensive review of this information is vital to the success of the WCA.
If they fail to do this what action should a claimant take? Many claimants would not be able to raise this with the HCP at the time and it is not possible to "intercept" the ESA85 report before it arrives with DWP and a decision over ESA entitlement is made.
Yours faithfully,
J Newman
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Dear J Newman
Please see attached response to your FoI request 298
Kind regards
DWP Central FoI Team
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 'HCP failings -'.
Thank you for all of this information, but it is clear from my question that I have read the handbook and all you have done is reproduce sections of it here rather than answer my straightforward question, so please re-read and respond.
Also, do you expect all claimants to have read the WCA Handbook prior to their WCA? If yes, where do you tell them that this is the case; if no, where do you tell claimants about all of the important issues you have explained in your response here?
I am sure you want claimants to be as well prepared as possible for their WCA.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/hc...
Yours faithfully,
J Newman
This is an automated confirmation that your request for information has
been received at the DWP Central FoI Team.
We will forward your request to the relevant information owner within the
Department who will respond to you direct.
Should you also have any further queries in connection with this request
do please contact us.
For further information on the Freedom of Information Act within DWP
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Dear Mr Newman,
Please see attached response to your FoI request.
Kind regards,
DWP Central FoI Team
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 'HCP failings -'.
In my original request I said
"If they fail to do this what action should a claimant take? Many claimants would not be able to raise this with the HCP at the time and it is not possible to "intercept" the ESA85 report before it arrives with DWP and a decision over ESA entitlement is made".
You have not answered this question in either the initial response or the previous IR response, so I am repeating it here. I cannot find the answer in any of the manuals you have referred me to. If you do not have this information, please just say you do not have it.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/hc...
Yours faithfully,
J Newman
This is an automated confirmation that your request for information has
been received at the DWP Central FoI Team.
We will forward your request to the relevant information owner within the
Department who will respond to you direct.
Should you also 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...
References
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1. http://www.dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-informa...
Dear Mr Newton
Please find enclosed a response to your request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act.
<<IR 163 response Mr Newman.pdf>>
Kind regards
Medical Services Contract Correspondence Unit, Department for Work and
Pensions, Room 306, Block 3, Norcross, Norcross Lane, Blackpool, FY5 3TA
Tel 01253 611556, extn 69956
Please consider the environment before printing
Dear DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence,
What this second IR response confirms is that:
1) Chris Grayling’s promise of more help and support for claimants is a lie. What could be more valuable than making sure a claimant is prompted to take everything relevant to a WCA.
2) Alternatively, DWP has decided to ignore Chris Grayling’s promise and continue on its own merry way.
3) DWP offers no facility to claimants who experience a demonstrably poor WCA other than to allow “nature” to take its course and fight the uphill battle retrospectively as an appeal.
4) DWP does not understand the meaning of the word “rhetorical”.
Yours sincerely,
J Newman
Dear Mr Newman
Please find enclosed a response to your request
<<Mr Newman 4824 Response.pdf>>
Kind regards
Medical Services Contract Correspondence Unit, Department for Work and
Pensions, Room 306, Block 3, Norcross, Norcross Lane, Blackpool, FY5 3TA
Please consider the environment before printing
Jim Otram left an annotation ()
What an extraordinary, ill-tempered, irrelevant and illiterate response from the DWP there, John.
It gives me several ideas for further requests though!
Well done for making the DWP look like a bunch of biased and uncomprehending asses in a fashion even more glaring than they usually - indeed frequently - achieve unaided.
Please keep up the good work.
John Slater left an annotation ()
I guess this means that you are getting under their skin! I just hope I can elicit such a response with some of my requests :-)
It does show the true face of the DWP in relation FOIA!
Dear DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence,
I am of course at somewhat of a disadvantage as the person who has composed this latest response (24/08) is able to personalise their vilification of me from the shelter of their anonymity. I cannot describe the tone of it more eloquently and accurately than the annotations here have already. I will expose and respond to the broader issues it raises elsewhere and confine my comments here to FoI and the response itself, particularly as it is both logically and factually incorrect. I would use another vehicle if I knew what it is.
1) My note dated Aug 9th was patently NOT a question or an IR request, so I am a wee bit miffed at being accused of raising one inappropriately. I am fully aware of the limitations of FoI legislation and the ideology behind the WDTK site. I know they do not like it to be used for debate, but I do feel entitled to respond to the latest DWP posting.
2) Unfortunately, some sections of the public sector have become so steeped in duplicity that they have lost all ability to distinguish fact from fiction. I will not comment here on why this is the inevitable result of a certain style of management.
3) The FoI legislation offers one of the few opportunities to attempt to clarify this distinction. Yes, it focuses on recorded information, but it is safe to assume within an organisation the size of DWP that anything NOT recorded is of no consequence and can be regarded as little more than hearsay or speculation – if it was material, it would most certainly be recorded somewhere.
4) I doubt the author here has experienced a WCA whereas I have three times over, all wrong! I am therefore somewhat better placed to segregate the theory from the practice. I would happily have the debate face to face if there was such an opportunity as I am very sure of my ground and armed with indisputable evidence (unlike DWP) to support any assertion I make.
5) The request here sought to define the truth behind a ministerial statement by offering DWP the opportunity to provide some supporting evidence, notably through their intentions behind what is undoubtedly the greatest manifestation of the support they could offer if indeed they are serious about the intention. As they are unable to do this there is only one conclusion that can be drawn – it is NOT an opinion, it is a logically deduced interpretation of the facts as presented by DWP. If there is an alternative interpretation they could have provided it and corrected my misunderstanding, but have chosen not to – clearly there is not one. (Although this too will be labelled as an opinion no doubt). The evidence-based methodology is the one that DWP itself favours and they are therefore governed by its rules in the interests of avoiding accusations of hypocrisy.
6) The statement over the proportion of GPs involved IS COMPLETELY FALSE. From its own statistics only around 25% of Atos FTE HCPs are registered with the GMC – the rest are nurses and physios. Also the proportion of WCAs performed by GP’s has been reducing, so clearly the overall expertise being applied is progressively diminishing.
7) The knowledge, expertise and rigour applied to maintain both are grossly overstated. DWP cannot even GUARANTEE that all HCPs have kept their registrations up to date and are therefore appropriately qualified at the time they undertake a WCA. It is absurd to state that a physiotherapist (with all due respect to all of them) has “vast experience” with mental disability. The last HCP I encountered whilst a registered nurse was attempting to make a living from a door to door Botox/collagen service and performing WCAs as an income top-up. This not in line with the picture painted here.
8) The reply claims objectivity, but cannot describe against what standard – after 4 years there is still no definition of “work” nor is there any evidence to support some of the descriptor changes that have been applied, which are of course driven by political dogma which by definition is partisan. There are also no performance measures in place so any suggestion of improvement is pure speculation – even by ‘Lord’ Harrington himself.
9) The picture it paints is one of a DWP DM sitting with a wealth of information about a claimant all of which is medically orientated, some of which could be highly technical and complex faced with making a decision when that individual has no medical training – how more perverse can one be?
10) I have no political affiliations whatsoever. I would just like to see the DWP “doing what is says on the tin”. I would remind DWP that they have judged my ability to work wrongly not just once, but on three consecutive occasions. They assure me that I have not been victimised, so I should presumably regard my experience as par for the course. I am already gravely worried about the chances of the next one being right first time, I think with due cause. Perhaps DWP would like to promise me that this will not be the case – surely not too much to ask?
11) They publicly accept they will make mistakes (by inference occasionally rather than my experience of 100%) and promise to explain why they did and how they will learn for the future. I have had no such explanation and my experience indicates nobody learnt anything. They did not even have the wit to demonstrably try harder third time round and assigned the least qualified, least interested HCP of the three.
12) I would like to avoid a repeat of the trauma on my next WCA, so I am simply looking for clear signs that next time, DWP will in fact get it right first time. So when someone says something has improved, it is hardly surprisingly that I want to see some evidence as without it the claims are just so much hot air.
13) My evidence is my own indisputable experience, so DWP, how can you match that??? Are you suggesting I’m making it all up? Just check your records.
14) Finally I quite like the thought that DWP feels it has no obligation to reply to a (rhetorical) question that by definition, does not require an answer. That at least does make some sort of sense.
Yours sincerely,
J Newman
Dear Mr Newman
Please find enclosed a response to your request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act by the Medical Services Contract Correspondence
Team Freedom of Information Officer, who apologises for the delay in
providing you with a response.
<<3702-3305 - Mr Newman Response.pdf>>
Kind regards
Medical Services Contract Correspondence Unit, Department for Work and
Pensions, Room 306, Block 3, Norcross, Norcross Lane, Blackpool, FY5 3TA
Tel 01253 611556, extn 69956
Please consider the environment before printing
Dear DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence,
For the record:
My opening paragraph is fact, not opinion.
Para 1) ditto.
Para 3) ditto. DWP has never once suggested it has formal processes that are NOT recorded.
Para 4) ditto.
Para 5) ditto. If DWP will not confirm that something is the case, by definition it CANNOT be the case. There is always the opportunity for DWP to be crystal clear in what it says, but it often chooses not to be believing that ambiguity is in its best interests.
Para 6) is true and supported by this latest response. One can only speculate over the motive behind the original misrepresentation. I will not do this as it is undoubtedly opinion rather than fact.
Para 7) ditto and confirmed by DWP itself in other FoI responses.
Para 8) ditto.
Para 9) is obviously rhetorical.
Para 10) is fact not opinion.
Para 11) Ditto
Para 13) ditto.
Clearly pretending that these issues are opinion is a simple ruse to avoid addressing them. QED.
No response required.
Yours sincerely,
J Newman
John Slater left an annotation ()
I was once told by someone working in the Pharma industry that:
If something isn't written down it is rumour and if it is written down but done so incorrectly, it is graffiti. It appears to me that the DWP is full of rumour and graffiti!
Dear DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence,
PS
My original question "What action should a claimant take?" has actually still not been answered. I have no idea how the option offered here of raising an SAR will help.
In not addressing this issue, one can only conclude that DWP is content to accept demonstrably flawed WCAs regardless of the consequences.It will no doubt claim that this is an opinion,but it is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence available.
The intention clearly should be to identify errors asap and avoid costly and distressing tribunal hearings, but it seems from this thread, DWP has no interest in either.[Again, the only logical conclusion from the information available. All DWP has to do to prove it wrong is produce some evidence to the contrary]
Yours sincerely,
J Newman
Dear Mr Newman,
Please see the attached response to your Internal Review. DWP apologises for this delay;
Thank you,
Health & Disability Assessments (Operations)/Department for Work and Pensions / Room 306 / Block 3 /Norcross / Norcross Lane / Blackpool / FY5 3TA
Dear DWP DWP Medical Services Correspondence,
If you would like us to believe what you suggest here, we first need some evidence and we need responses that contain more overt sincerity than can be acheived through paragraphs so obviously cut and pasted from elsewhere.
Yours sincerely,
J Newman
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J Newman left an annotation ()
Summary to date:
1)DWP has said it (rightly) does not expect claimants to read the WCA Handbook, but also that much of the information of use to claimants is NOT provided anywhere else.
2)DWP has accepted that only ID + medication is mentioned in the Atos letter – NOT ANY of the useful information that would help a claimant best present their situation.
It tries to tell us that it is doing all it can to help claimants through the process and to obtain the correct result first time, in line with the promises made by Chris Grayling – clearly on this evidence totally empty promises – it could do a great deal more if it wanted to.
The matter of what action a claimant should take HAS STILL NOT BEEN ANSWERED and is therefore the subject of a second IR request.