By Lisa Kearns, Welfare Benefits Caseworker – Leading and Learning, Citizens Advice Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent   Whilst working with a Service Coordinator to support a customer with their claim for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), we realised that the main bulk of evidence for many customers, comes from the experiences and knowledge of the Service Coordinator alone.  This could be because the customer has been struggling to access support from the NHS or Social Care for example.   As the Service Coordinator spends a significant amount of time with the customer they will often be the person best able to identify the help and support needed and provide an accurate representation of this. Initially we asked the Service Coordinator to prepare a supporting letter explaining the customer’s needs whilst relating them to the relevant descriptors which are addressed at the face to face assessment for PIP.  The Service Coordinator felt unable to do this without a template or examples. We provided an old copy of a template used by Citizens Advice.  However it was written in a very technical style and the Service Coordinator struggled to understand the jargon used and to then apply it to someone with multiple and complex needs. We recognised that a… Continue Reading