More from the Parliamentary Committe submissions on ESA and the Work Capability Assessment.
“We have no confidence that the new providers of the WCA will be much different from Atos Healthcare, unless the fundamental contractual arrangements are opened up to extensive scrutiny and realistic adjustment. The contractual relations introduced between DWP and Atos Healthcare as well as how compliance is sought within Atos Healthcare practices, were largely responsible for the poor performance of Atos Healthcare. An analysis by Kaliya Franklin was published by the Centre for Welfare Reform, entitled, ‘Investigating the real reason for the misery of ‘fit for work’ assessments’. Franklin analysed this in terms of required ‘statistical norms’, which are more commonly understood by the rest of us as targets, such that:“The small number of points a frontline assessor is able to give without eventually triggering audit clearly demonstrate why there is a vast disparity between initial assessment and appeal; an audit may be triggered if the assessor awards the points outlined in the descriptors, ie if they go above an average of 2.1 points for physical conditions and 3.6 points for mental health conditions”.
We can judge, crudely, from these figures that if, for example, a first claimant with only physical difficulties was awarded in total 15 points and placed in the WRAG (Work Related Activity Group), the assessor would, on average, need to award 6 of the next claimants with no points. We can also judge from Franklin’s analysis that overall assessors were effectively obliged to award less than 15 points in about two thirds of cases.”
Written evidence submitted by John Slater (WCA0028).
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