Is the Social Welfare Appeals System working?

FLAC has an interesting article in today's Irish Times claiming that the
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But the social welfare appeals office is not an independent body. It is an office of the Department of Social Protection, the body whose decisions are being appealed. And the appeals officers are civil servants of the department, appointed to the appeals office by the Minister, and who may be transferred back to another section of the department.

While the appeals office cites the high rate of success on appeal as proof of its autonomy from the department, an alternative view is that this really indicates problems at the heart of the welfare system.

Poor decision-making and bad administrative practice, coupled with increased pressure on the department, have helped push up the appeals rate.

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I have no first hand experience, but if you have 50,000 appeals a year, surely you have to have an admistratively efficient process. Having said that, there are long delays in the current system. But would they be longer if there was a completely independent system?

Is there no review process? Where a person can ask for a decision to be reviewed and it could be done much more promptly. And then appealed if the review was unfavourable and unreasonable.

Brendan Burgess said:

I have no first hand experience, but if you have 50,000 appeals a year, surely you have to have an admistratively efficient process. Having said that, there are long delays in the current system.

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Well isn't there a problem if there needs to be 50K appeals a year. Isn't there a problem if a lot of those succeed when they should have been properly assessed in the first place. But it keeps the social welfare workers busy I guess.

And yes I've been through social welfare including the appeals process and from what I've read on AAM nothing has changed much. The system is designed for you to fail at getting it right on first application, fail at the form filling, sending you hither and thither, weeks for this or that bit of paper, documents you send in that 'disappear, and then weeks or months for decisions. And feeling demeaned in the whole process. Horrible system as I recall and one I'd hope never ever to have to go through again. My appeals lady was lovely and I won (which I didn't realise then) and got an unexpected lump sum just a week before I left the country for work in the USA.

I won my appeal. They owed me a year of backdated payments. I¨m passing one of the worst times in all my life expecting the money. They have lost documents twice. My ex employer even don´t want to see me anymore and I´m living right now thanks to xanax and motilium.

Is there no review process? Where a person can ask for a decision to be reviewed and it could be done much more promptly. And then appealed if the review was unfavourable and unreasonable.

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There is nominally a review process available but it is by the same deciding officer that made the original decision. This would not inspire confidence in most people and many choose to ignore the review process for this reason and proceed to the appeals process.

Currently the Social Protection (SW) Appeals process is swamped, under information received from Info@SocialWelfare.ie appeals are 6 months behind in assessment and reviews submitted in Sept 2012 are only now be dealt with such in the current backlog. with regard to files documents going astray lost .ie when dealing with Social Protection (SW) Dept's. it is best when sending documentation to photocopy your information being sent, and use register post where ever possible. that ensures a track and trace facility and a signature for receipt of your document's. and again I implore people who are dealing with the dept...waiting 6 months or longer, have your local TD ask your Questions as a Parlimentary Question in Dail Eireann to the Social Protection Minister.. on your behalf, it is written, recorded, and also numbered and dated. and does help get the matter expedited.

I appealed in writing a DSP decision/calculation last week. This week I got an acknowledgement and a reference number.

Back in February and March I queried a DSP decision and I detailed in writing errors in the calculation to the local officer involved for review/correction. Revised calculations were produced which only partially corrected errors and made a new error! As the local officer twice failed to calculate properly, I sent the details into appeal. My case is a very simple DSP matter and should not need to go to an appeals office. Perhaps there are a significant number of cases going to appeal because some local DSP officers don't resolve issues properly. More efficiency in local offices would surely lower the numbers of appeals.

regardless of how many mistakes the D/O makes it is rare for them to admit liability even on appeal, but you can enlist the Office of the Ombudsman in your Quest if the matter isn't resolved to your satisfaction, this may take 4/5 weeks but the percentage of success is about 82%. remember they DSP abhorr to think they are wrong and you may be right ? they have a Policy Unit based in Dublin unknown to the ordinary commoner like you and I. this dept tells each SP Dept what policy to adhere and operate to and this is strictly enforced. until you concede or prove them wrong eventually ?

I feel that far too many cases that could be resolved locally are being sent to appeal. Each time SW turns down a claim their letter states "you have the right to appeal" and most people head off in that direction.

In many of my posts I have advised people to use the Appeals process as a last,last resort as this is such a lengthy situation.

SW do not offer a review or a suggestion of submitting further information in support of the claim. Very many claims have been resolved by the customer submitting further info. which they did not realize was relevant or was omitted in error in the original application

Reviews are pointless when dealing with certain offices particularly Longford. They follow what they believe to be the law and only back down when overturned on appeal. Looking for a review will only add months onto the resolution timeframe.