PIP is assessed by scoring the care needs and mobility difficulties that arise from your illnesses or disabilities.
One of the activities that gets scored is your ability to engage with other people face-to-face. This is PIP activity number 9.
There are three ways that you can score points under this activity.
- You score two points if you need someone to prompt you in order to engage with other people face-to-face. Prompting includes reminding you of things, encouraging you or explaining things to you, (Descriptor b)
- You score four points if you need social support from someone who is trained or experienced in helping people to engage in social situations. This could be a worker, or it could be a family member or friend. (Descriptor c)
- You score eight points if you cannot engage with other people because doing so would cause you overwhelming psychological distress; or because it would make you to behave in a way that would cause in a substantial risk of harm to you or to someone else. (Descriptor d)
Is it prompting or is it social support?
Where you are supported by family members or friends, it can be difficult to know which of descriptor b and c applies.
The essential question is: Could any well meaning person provide the help you need, or did the person(s) who support you have to learn how to do it.
If anyone can provide the help that you need you come under descriptor b and score two points
If the person who supports you had to learn how to meet your needs then, because they need to be trained or experienced, you come under descriptor c, and score four points.
Does the person who provides social support have to be with you?
No!
The DWP used to say that prompting and social support only counted if it happened while you were actually engaging in social contact.
In July 2019 the Supreme Court decided that this was wrong.
If someone helps you to prepare to engage with other people by prompting you, or by giving you social support, this counts too.
Arguably, if you need someone to de-brief you after engaging with other people this could count too.
So what about people who were assessed before the Supreme Court changed the rules?
Late last year, the DWP announced that they would be going back over lots of old claims, to check whether this interpretation of the rules affects the amount of the PIP award.
This won’t lead to whole-new-assessments, but many people will be getting letters asking about their needs for help with dealing with other people so that their awards can be checked.
Screenshots of DWP examples of these letters and the attached reply forms are included at the bottom of this page.
If you get one of these letters it is important to tell the DWP about the help that you get preparing to deal with others and the help that you get after social engagements.
Need to know more?
You can find more PIP resources here
Feel free to get in touch if you want to talk these things through.
mike@mikebolton.co.uk 074949 525 371
