Background
Dr Shepherd will be attending one of his regular meetings with Maximus on June 9th.
Maximus is one of the private companies that carry out medical assessments for DWP benefit eligibility.
Meeting Agenda
On the Agenda for the next meeting will be an update on what will be happening to these medical assessments over the coming months.
For the past year almost all DWP medical assessments, and re-assessments, have been taking place using written information, or through telephone interviews.
This is a situation that is likely to continue for the majority of people who are claiming a DWP benefit, or are being re-assessed, for the foreseeable future.
For many people with ME/CFS, the fact that they no longer have to go to medical assessment centres has been both helpful and effective.
And judging from feedback, the DWP appear to have been applying a very light touch to the process of benefit re-assessments in many cases.
However, now that life is returning to some degree of normality, face to face DWP medical assessments will be returning at some point.
At the same time, it looks as though video link assessments (which are now being trialled) could be progressively brought in to replace some of the telephone interviews.
If you have any issues that you want to raise relating to DWP benefit assessments, especially in relation to medical assessments for ESA, that you would like Dr Shepherd to raise please pass them on via our Facebook discussions, or via feedback@meassociation.org.uk.
Please note that these need to be issues of general concern – Dr Shepherd cannot take up individual cases at this meeting
Latest Poll
Our latest poll asks about your experiences with PIP or ESA. Please complete the poll below and see our archive of polls here.
What has been your experience of DWP benefit assessments, or re-assessments, for ESA and / or PIP during the past year?
- ESA - Excellent (5%)
- ESA - Good (3%)
- ESA - OK (6%)
- ESA - Mixed - good and bad (5%)
- ESA - Poor (2%)
- ESA - Very poor (8%)
- PIP - Excellent (3%)
- PIP - Good (5%)
- PIP - OK (4%)
- PIP - Mixed - good and bad (4%)
- PIP - Poor (7%)
- PIP - Very poor (19%)
- Not claiming any DWP benefits (28%)
Total Voters: 183
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