First appointment with WRAG adviser - what to expect and do

[Pritti]

Hi I was too ill to protest in time when the letter arrived some months ago moving me to WRAG. Now a letter has arrived within a week of an appointment made for me. My husband, who has been made redundant, is going with me. Is this allowed? The very thought of this has brought on my depression again, and with it, my epilepsy has kicked off. What I'd really like to ask any adviser is - who would emply a 56 year old woman who has worked for years and has suffered from chronic depression, anxiety and epilepsy? But I suppose I should just get on with it. People on this site have been so helpful to me in the past - please can you advise me of what to expect and what I should do? I am so nervous that I haven't slept since the letter arrived yesterday - I am shattered, rattled and dizzy with epileptic symptoms. Will these people give me help of advice if I say I could try to work a few hours here or there? I have a degree (decades old) but I could do things like help kids with homework, as I've been helping friends' kids. I could take and fetch kids from school like my husband does, though he does it for friends, unpaid. I suppose this would involve registering with all sorts??? Please help And many thanks in advance to all you wonderful people Pritti

[Mr.P]

Who is the letter from ?

 

You can certainly take someone along with you as a minder, witness, or for moral support. If they object, instruct them to seek guidance from a manager. You also have the right to a private room if you are uncomfortable discussing personal issues in a public area. If the appointment is with the JCP/DWP, it would be advisable to ring them as soon as possible to request the private room.

[Pritti]

Hi Mr. P. The letter is from my local jobcentre - unsigned, simply "on behalf of the manager", though which manager they mean, I don't know. The manager of this programme? Of the centre? It is a standard letter with my name after "Dear" and a date, time and the first name of the person I am to meet. It says the appointment can be up to one hour. I will take my husband with me, because else I don't know how I will make it there, let alone through an hour. Do you have any idea as to what they will ask me, what they will suggest re jobseeking? Is it like being on jobseekers allowance when people have to prove all the time that they are chasing down every job the adviser thinks they should chase? Will I have to do a CV or go to training? Is it possible to ask to do permitted work for a little while and would something like tutoring a couple of hours per week count as permitted work or does that have to be with a set employer? A friend suggested this and knows someone who needs a tutor for her kids for two hours per week, but obviously on a self-employed basis. This is the kind of work which might suit someone like me because I could re-schedule or cancel when I don't feel well without the employer being affected. However, I don't want to put ideas into the adviser's head and find myself without a lifeline while I try out something like this. Thanks for the help. Pritti.

[Nystagmite]

They can't make you job seek. They may suggest that you could maybe look at jobs you're capable of doing. But you can't be made to job seek.

 

That interview would be a good time to bring up permitted work. You will be told the rules of the scheme, ie, hours and the maximum amount you can earn.

[Pritti]

My appointment with the adviser is tomorrow. Can anyone please tell me what to expect, what to be prepared for? And how often would I have to meet with the adviser? Many thanks for the advice so far. It's really helpful. And so is just knowing there are people out there who care. Pritti

[reallymadwoman]

From reading what others have written, I don't know that anyone can answer your questions precisely as what is discussed at these meetings, what is expected of you and how often you need to attend seems to vary enormously.

 

Don't forget you (or your husband) may have to be firm about him being allowed to accompany you and sit with you all the time, and you can insist on a private room if this will make you more comfortable, though they may then just postpone the meeting until one is available.

 

I think the most important thing is to make sure you think everything through before agreeing to anything, insist on being given time to think about things if you need it, and don't be pushed into something unsuitable.

[Pritti]

Thank you so much. The bit about taking time to think through things (I tend to accept things for the sake of peace or pleasing others) is really important. My husband has been told to remind me of this.

 

Pritti

[Pritti]

Oh, and one last question - Does anyone know whether the rules regarding permitted work have changed? Can one now do permitted work as self-employed, through agencies, or offering services to a number of different people?

 

This is the kind of work which is most flexible and makes the most sense for someone like me because if I get a few hours here and there I can move them around when I have cluster-fit days which really exhaust me. Though goodness knows how I'll balance out whole weeks of fugue.

 

 

 

Many, many thanks

[**Margaret**]

:Pritti:

 

Following a fracas in Edinburgh, earlier this year a flurry of freedom of info responses made it clear that benefit claimants can have family or a friend to accompany, and if necessary represent them during interviews at a Jobcentre. One example at;

 

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/accompanied_to_benefits_intervie#incoming-499044

 

The purpose of a work focused interview is to discuss an action plan of steps that you can take to prepare for work, which may include work related activity. Or dependent on your circumstances, a referral to the work programme. Here's the crib sheet used by work coaches;

 

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/support_for_claimants_with_healt#incoming-593191

(You need 04 NJWFI v 15)

 

Work related activity may include a curriculum vitae, training, or voluntary work. But the Jobcentre can't ask you to look for a job or undertake work experience.

 

Personally, I wouldn't put the idea of permitted work into their heads (especially not work that might involve an expensive disclosure and barring check) unless you're sure you've got a sympathetic adviser. Permitted work has to be the right option for the claimant at the time. By choice, I've done several stints of permitted/theraputic work which have helped to buy extras for my daughter and God-children. But it's not an appropriate response to 'persuasion' from some advisers to look for work.

 

Should you feel that a few very flexible hours a week will help your confidence or whatever, the only involvement you need from Jobcentreplus is a PW1 form before you start.

 

http://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/work-people-living-disability-or-health-conditions

 

Best wishes, Margaret.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pritti]

Thank you Margaret, for the invaluable advice. I've checked the links you sent me. At the end of it, the DWP person should have seen me - sweating, trembling and finally rolling on to fullblown fits. These are the things brought on by all this worry. Cluster-fits.

 

This is the kind of thing which makes my daughter tell me to tell the DWP to sod off. Poor child, she's just started work and doesn't know what's down the road and round the corner but wants to support me herself.

 

So - all you helpful Caggers - fingers and all else crossed for me tomorrow.

 

Many thanks

Pritti

[Pritti]

So - now I've been for my first interview..........

 

I know that every first interview and every advisor is different, but thought I'd share this morning's experience in case anything about it is useful to anyone else.

 

My husband accompanied me, on advice from this site which proved invaluable, though very upsetting for the "advisor". We got there early and weren't kept waiting very long by the advisor who at the outset worried me with her deep frown and offhand manner. She was very young and seemingly terribly inexperienced (enough to be rattled by the presence of a third party keeping records and asking questions) but managed to launch into a garbled version of what I recognized as the cribsheets Margaret recommended that I look at.

 

She checked my personal details, then ran through an explanation of what ESA was, and what the WRAG was. She then went on to say that I could appeal against my allocation to the WRAG - she couldn't stop me. I told her I thought that I was too late, hence turning up for this interview. I explained the reason for not taking the appeal procedure up was that I was emotionally drained after losing my beloved father earlier this year and having my equally beloved mother sink into dementia and not recognize me. I couldn't cope with more stress like the whole ESA thing, so just accepted what was done by DWP. She proceeded to act like this appeal was a real option. This is something I must look up - whether I can appeal outside the 30 day period.

 

I asked her to explain what advice or help was meant to give me. Her response to me was that they were specifically and strongly urged NOT to give claimants advice (hence the name "advisors" !) but simply to get information from us.

 

I told her that even if I was going to appeal against my WRAG allocation and even if I ended up in the support group (!) I would still want to know about all manner of things - what training was on offer besides the basic stuff all of which I am way beyond, what they'd pay for (turned out that they emphatically would NOT pay for anything but the basic literacy and numeracy), whether I'd be allowed to do permitted work and how much if I was SG allocated, etc. I insisted that this was what I'd come for - advice and assistance about work, whether permitted whilst on ESA or after leaving ESA as the DWP decides.

 

No, she insisted, she had to simply elicit information from me. That information, it turned out, was mainly my medical history. I felt she was a kind of lay i.e. non-medical - assessor. The cribsheets Margaret referred me to state very clearly (to advisors) that the first interview is "a mandatory diagnostic interview"

I think they mean "diagnostic" in the medical sense. Diagnosis by lay people as replacement for ATOS failures.

 

She asked me whether I'd had an assessment and when I said no, asked me whether I was a new ESA claimant and when I looked surprised and said I'd been moved from IB, she said "Oh, that's why you had no assessment," and proceeded to elicit my medical details herself. I asked her why she didn't have my folder or at least have everything about me on her computer (such, after all, is the purpose of computers, to give us joined up record-keeping) to which she responded that she had no such details and wasn't allowed to have my file. She was, however, allowed to get the details from me and oblige me to explain my condition.

 

At this stage she noticed that my husband was typing notes on his ipad and became extremely agitated about him keeping records of the meeting. I explained that my epilepsy means that I have petite mal episodes as well as grande mal seizures and that these are followed by memory lapses, hence the need to have someone else present to record things for me to go over afterwards. She reluctantly went back to typing notes on her computer about my condition, asking him to spell the two types of seizure to her and explain what each meant. My husband is probably older than her father but she rudely referred to him as "you" this and "you" that, never once asking his name or speaking politely to him in any way because he was just quietly recording things.

 

Then she went through my employment history and qualifications. Mysteriously, though she did not have my all important medical records on file, she did have my CV and didn't have to get it all out of me - clearly what was important to have on file was what would put me into work, not what would keep me out of it.

 

Again I asked what advice she had about training, distance or flexible working, permitted work, etc. She said of course she'd let me know all this, but at a later interview because we were running out of time (we were 20 minutes into the interview and had learnt little thus far) and she could see I wasn't well so what she'd do was tell "them" to contact me in a COUPLE OF MONTHS to let me know what WRA they would expect of me. Here I again pushed her to know the range of WRA she meant, because I am convinced that unless they offer decent training, any work programme is futile, stressful and a waste of state money.

 

At this stage, out of the blue, she proceeded to tell me that she thought that I could "overcome my barriers". {Someone really should report the DWP to the Plain English Society - conditionality? barriers? conducting an intervention?} and that she'd seen many people do this. Many? Really? When I judged her working life to be no more than a year or two? And she'd seen people cured of both epilepsy and asthma? Either the Christmas Miracle or the DWP is up for the Noble Prize for medicine, having discovered a cure for both of these.

 

Anyway, she hastily packed us off, saying "They" would be in touch.

 

So - I need to think it through, read up some more, see whether I can handle the strain of appeal or whether it's best just to let things run their course. I am tired of it all and now that we don't have dependent kids any longer and we're used to living frugally..........is an appeal worth the damage it will do to my health?.

[estellyn]

You can make a late appeal up to 13 months after the decision if you have good cause for delay - for instance your stress levels or medical condition.

 

Interesting the asthma and epilepsy cures, of course a load of rubbish - as far as I'm aware even a ketogenic diet isn't a cure for adult epilepsy and as with anything else only attempts to manage symptoms.

[Mr.P]

At this stage, out of the blue, she proceeded to tell me that she thought that I could "overcome my barriers".

 

I have had one jumped up junior "adviser" attempting to make a diagnosis in the past. I asked him what his medical qualifications were and whether he was registered with any recognised bodies... He failed to provide an answer, so I demanded he deleted the incorrect "diagnosis" from the system forthwith.

 

If you are up to it, I would recommend following estellyn's advice. If you need help or pointers in preparing an appeal, there are quite a few regulars here that can provide assistance.

[Nystagmite]

Epilepsy is different for everyone. My dad, for example, has his very well controlled by medication alone. He works, drives and is generally able to lead a normal life. My cousin (whose cause is different) is having difficulty with his being controlled well enough to lead a normal life.

 

I don't know anyone with asthma whose had it cured. They, after about 6 months of trying, managed to get mine under control - but that's it. I can't enter a certain shop or two and it's certainly not "cured".

 

If you do win your appeal and end up in SG, you are entitled to ask for help with training, etc. I do, however, not recommend the work programme. I did some of this as a JSA claimant and it was stressful.

 

The person you saw isn't medically trained and not allowed to suggest any treatment you should undergo.

[Pritti]

I'm sorry to be on here again, but my husband thinks that, even if I have no direct advice to ask or offer, then relating my experiences may be of use to others.

 

 

Well here goes -

 

 

Following on from that first visit, I saw the same advisor today. This time her attitude was one of "What are you doing here? Why aren't you in the Support Group?"

 

 

The entire session was spent with her persuading me to look to other options, first the support group and failing that, DLL (now PIP). I argued that I was way out of time and even more out of energy, inclination, hope, whatever - and that it seems only the terminally ill( and sometimes not even them) get put into SG.

 

 

She countered that she had had many clients who are like me and successfully got moved to SG simply by writing a letter to the "benefits people". She said that there were no forms to fill out. I'd simply have to write a letter and perhaps be examined. What? Really?

 

 

I have no idea of what's going on. From this woman seeing me "overcome" my epilepsy and asthma to her now seeing me as a permanent and complete invalid?

 

 

Now I have the freepost envelope she gave me, plus the number to call if I don't have a response to my letter in one week.

 

 

Has anyone else had this bizarre experience? What does it mean?

[Mr.P]

I'm sorry to be on here again, but my husband thinks that, even if I have no direct advice to ask or offer, then relating my experiences may be of use to others.

 

Apologies are not required. It is nice to have an update to gauge if the advice was useful or so that your experiences can help someone else.

 

As for the change in attitude from this adviser, it may be that she is sympathetic to your circumstances and pushing you in to the Support Group to save you the pain that some suffer in the WRAG. Being in the Support Group does not make you invalid or an invalid.

[sillygirl1]

I wonder what Atos Healthcare will make of my assessment when it comes, even the Consultant and GP aren't sure of what has inflammed the lining of my lungs, it isn't asthma, COPD or anything like that.

 

I already am working when I am fit enough to do so - so I think they may be different with me - they really are adding another 'layer of government' into the system with these assessements, designed to prove that the GP/Consultant/Health system in general is 'not fit for purpose'.

 

Good luck and I hope you get into the correct group - as stated the work programme is as good as useless, supervised job searches which only bring up jobs already applied for, cv writing courses every 3 months, and how to write cover letters (which are almost never read anyway)!

[Nystagmite]

and that it seems only the terminally ill( and sometimes not even them) get put into SG.

 

Not ture. Im not terminally ill and am in SG. I know plenty who aren't terminally ill and are in SG.

[Pritti]

Hi everyone

Thank you all for the advice and just for being there. It's taken me ten days, but I am finally ready to face writing this letter the advisor told me to write. The problem is that I don't quite know what to put in it. Should I simply say that I', writing, albeit late, because my personal advisor told me she doesn't think I am fit for work related activities and shouldn't be in the WRAG? She said they'd call me in for an ATOS exam and then decide. The thought almost makes me want to throw up. But this is what she said. Maybe I should just crawl under the covers...........and hide.

[sillygirl1]

Surely it should be the adviser writing the letter to the relevant department letting them know she thinks you are unfit, and not yourself.

[**Margaret**]

:Pritti:

 

It means that training for some work coaches (new job title for advisers) is woefully inadequate and she was out of her depth, during both interviews. Also, some disability advisers have little understanding of the technicalities of employment n support cos it's not part of their job.

 

Now, please come out from under the duvet. And if you're able to give us the exact date of your conversion award we'll be able to outline your options for what to write in the letter.

 

A personal independence payment isn't an alternative to ESA. They're different benefits for different purposes. Here's some info;

 

http://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/personal-independence-payment-pip

 

And just for good measure, as it seems to have been missed;

 

http://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/work-people-living-disability-or-health-conditions

 

Best wishes, Margaret.