Disability and Job Centre Appointments

jessovbhe

Hi,

My friend gets full PIP and universal credit. She works 12 hours a week (2 days) as that is the most her disability allows, as although being in pain all the time, she does want to work as much as possible. However, this small amount of work (which the employer is generously flexible with if she cannot make it some days) has lead the job centre/universal credit to claim she is fit to attend job centre appointments.

Firstly, these appointments are hard for her to get to without being in lots of pain and having to rest for days afterwards. Also, I see no point to the appointments because if/when she becomes well enough to work more hours, she will do that at the company she is currently with, so wouldn't need to search for a new job or get help writing a cv etc. And if somebody is unwell enough to be able to claim full PIP, how are they considered well enough to attend the job centre? Has there been some kind of mistake?

It would be more beneficial for her to not work at all so they can't claim she is fit enough to attend, so I don't see how universal credit is meant to be helping people to get into work. Any advice on how to show them the appointments are harmful and unnecessary?

Thanks in advance

elsien

People who work full time can get full PIP so that in itself does not mean people
are automatically too unwell to be attending appointments.
If your friend is able to get to permitted work twice a week then there is no clear reason that she can't get to the job centre once a fortnight, or however often it is. Not to do so would risk her losing her UC.
It doesn't make sense that she can carry out a days work, but attending a short appointment wipes her out for days - that is how DWP will look at it.
So what is her work, where is it, and what's the difference between getting to that and getting to the job centre? She needs to properly evidence the difficulties, but on the face of it attendance is not an unreasonable request.

tomtom256

They are mandatory and part of the elgibility criteria.

Presumably your friend is in the intensive work search regime?

They would need to provide fit notes to start the work capability process, during which time the work coach could restrict amount of appointments required.

Have they actually explained this to their work coach?

As they could also ask for telephone appointments instead of office appointments, which the work coach should be able to do.