Aberdeen Action On Disability

Very helpful
Aug 29th, 2021

Jun 14th, 2019

Sep 29th, 2018

I dealt with a lovely lady called Andrea who took over as my support welfare officer in Dec 2021, dealt with a PIP reassessment form for me and who did a fantastic job, advised me she would be PIPs main point of contact and that I would not need to deal with them personally as that would be dealt with by AOD. And that I would be contacted when PIP made contact with them. Cut to a few weeks ago and I found out Andrea has left by getting a call from a Pip assessor, not action on disability themselves, and been replaced by a rather unpleasant woman named Jennifer who made sure to comment on my personality disorder diagnosis specifically (a real and protected disability, unfortunately for her), told me to join the "real world" when I simply repeated back to her what I was told by the previous employee to expect about not having to deal with assessors until the assessment itself - I'll admit I misremembered a fact about accompanying someone to assessments but that's the height of what I'll accept blame for considering how I was treated during the rest of that call. Hiding behind the fact it's a "small charity" as to why I wasn't contacted after pip contacted them is not satisfactory, their "tiny wee team" obviously had time to pull my file out with my full medical history and had my number to have a nosy at my conditions a number of hours between when they were contacted by pip and when I contacted them, and decide not to contact me anyway. Obviously whatever Jennifer saw in my files made her think I didn't need the help! Why not contact me between then when they knew additional documentation was required, or so I would know to expect a call from PIP? Why not allocate me a new officer after Andrea left? Then I asked for the basic bits of documentation the pip assessor asked them for and they still haven't sent it. Felt so devastated and let down when I'd had such a positive experience with Andrea and awful knowing I gave full access to all my medical information to a service with someone so judgemental in charge. Need to either reduce your case load and let people know you're doing it or stop taking on mental health cases if you're not going to advocate for them properly. Contact the Financial Inclusion Team or Citizen's Advice or another organisation because this one is not fit for purpose and you don't deserve to be belittled and further during what is already a very dehumanising experience trying to get disability support.
Sep 3rd, 2022