No 4 point PIP descriptors results
| Submission ID: 1163938 |
| Date: 2025-04-09 19:05:48 |
| Nickname: Pearl |
| Age: 57 |
| Main health condition: Both physical and mental health |
| Main conditions that affect daily living: Autism, ADHD, chronic major depression, secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, chronic pain, fatigue. |
| Rate of PIP daily living component: Standard |
| 4 point descriptor score: No |
| Possibility to score at least one 4-point daily living descriptor at the next review: I should do for multiple descriptors, but that's not how the DWP works. They ignore most of your problems, award the minimum points they can, and spread them, giving you just enough 2's to barely qualify. |
| Tasks you struggle with on a day-to-day basis: Extreme chronic fatigue means I sleep and/or rest for 16 hours or more per day, and the slightest exertion leaves me exhausted and needing bed rest for several hours. A single, uneventful trip out to the hospital or for lunch on Mother's Day, for example, leaves me bedridden for day afterwards. I need a rollator (Zimmer with wheels) to get about outside, and indoors I hold on to the walls and furniture to get around. My balance is now so poor, I fall a lot, even when being extra careful, and I often cannot get up again without help. I can't stand for more than a couple of minutes without encountering the 'MS hug', a central nervous system 'seize-up', which feels as if I'm being squeezed by a steel corset from diaphragm to crotch, unable to breathe. It's very painful and quickly becomes a matter of sit down or fall down. This makes household chores near impossible, I can't hoover or sweep the floor, prepare food, wash dishes, clean the bathroom, shop for groceries or even manage basic things like showering. One of the most disabling issues of MS for me has been loss of bladder control. My brain and bladder no long communicate and I am reliant on catheters and adult nappies. I don't know when I need to pee, and I can neither start nor stop urination at will. This makes leaving the house particularly difficult, and I have more than once had to get home via public transport having very obviously wet myself, which was humiliating. I have several issues resulting from autism including not feeling hunger. Which means I rely on being prompted to remember to eat, and in practice this really means someone putting food in front of me and watching me eat it. I have ended up in the High Dependency Unit at the hospital for a week due to ketoacidosis (a potentially fatal complication of low blood sugar. Note I am not diabetic) because I have forgotten to eat for days at a time. So this is a very serious issue for me. There is so much more I could tell you, about so many other things I struggle with, but I hope this gives a basic insight into my reality. |
| Expected income you will lose if the Green Paper cuts are imposed: I receive standard living and mobility PIP, and Universal Credit including the Health Element. I have no other income, and cannot work. My total income is therefore c £1100 per month. If the cuts are imposed, that will drop to £400 per month. I would also lose my bus pass, Blue Badge, Council Tax Reduction, Warm Home Discount etc. After paying my electricity and gas bills, and Council Tax, I would be left with about £22 a week to live on, which barely covers the cost of my incontinence supplies. I hardly have a life or go beyond my front door as it is. With the cuts, I could not afford food or to pay for any of the help I need. I'd be confined to my home, with no way to keep it clean, no way to feed myself, or to pay for the frequent hospital visits I need. I could fall and lie dying, or dead on the floor for months, and nobody would know or care. I would seriously consider Assisted Dying a preferable course of action than being condemned to live in abject poverty and destitution like that. |
| Expected problems if you tried moving into work, with support from a work coach: I have never been able to hold a job for more than a few months at a time, because of issues with social interaction and executive function deficits caused by autism and ADHD. The thought of going back to a life of constant fear and worry, is today the day they will fire me, how will I pay my bills when they do, etc, fills me with existential dread. After forty years of living that every day, interspersed with periods of sudden unemployment and no income at all, I experienced daily suicidal ideation and eventually had a nervous breakdown. Even if I could physically return to work, my mental health would not survive it. Additionally, as I am pretty much immobile, incontinent, unreliable - at least a couple of times a week I literally CANNOT get out of bed, so I would be frequently absent without notice, difficult to integrate due to neurodivergence, potentially requiring expensive and complex accommodations which might not help anyway, unable to function for more than a couple hours at a time, typically asleep during office hours, and physically unable to perform tasks requiring strength, agility, dexterity or stamina, I am dubious as to whether any employer would be prepared to employ me, or have work available that I could realistically do. |
| Anything else to tell us: Disability is not a lifestyle choice. ALL disabled people want to be ABLE to work, but that doesn't mean there is work we can do. The proposed cuts will leave a million or more disabled people who cannot work, or for whom work is not an option, destitute. The Government are cutting benefits for one group, and one group only. The disabled. If they are allowed to do this, pensioners will be next, mark my words. |
Report this submission: If you see a problem, please copy the Submission ID number above and send it to us using the contact form, along with details of your concerns.