22 January 2009
Two draft chapters from our forthcoming guide to limited capability for work on mental health and learning difficulties grounds are available to download for free now.
The full guide, available to members only, will be published in February 2009.
The guide deals with the process of applying for ESA for people with mental health conditions and learning difficulties and looks at exemptions, exceptional circumstances and the points system as they relate to limited capability for work. A separate guide to eligibility for the support group on mental health grounds will be available in March or April of this year.
The new guide takes claimants and their advisers page by page through the ESA50 questionnaire. It:
Explains each activity in plain English.
Details the kind of evidence you need to give on each page of the questionnaire, with numerous sample answers.
Flags up where an activity may overlap with another activity or the exceptional circumstances rules, so that you don’t miss out on potential entitlement.
Alerts you to any possible threat to your DLA claim.
Tells you how Atos Healthcare professionals have been trained to interpret the descriptors.
Goes through each descriptor, phrase by phrase, explaining what it may mean, highlighting areas of uncertainty and suggesting ways to argue for maximum points at claim or appeal stage.
We’re very keen to have feedback on the guide before we publish the first edition. So please do download a copy of the sample chapters and let us know what you think.
We’re also running two new open ESA training days in Bristol. There’s an introduction to ESA day in March and an ESA on mental health and learning difficulties day in June. More details and booking forms for the ESA training are available from this link.
Download the sample ESA on mental health and learning difficulties chapters from this link
