Verified by design

Every document we issue can be checked by whoever receives it

The hardest moment in this whole process is not obtaining a letter. It is the moment somebody in an office looks at it and silently wonders whether it was bought from a website in four minutes. We built the answer to that question into the page itself.

What sits on the document

Near the foot of every letter, card and certificate we issue there is a unique reference and a code that can be scanned with any phone camera. The reference looks like this:

NSP-A-7K42-QX19 Scanning the code opens the check directly. Typing the reference by hand reaches the same place, which matters for anybody working from a printed copy or a photocopy.

What comes back when it is checked

StatusValid — currently in force
Document typeAssessment letter
IssuedShown as a date
HandlerJ•••• M••••
AnimalB••••
Clinical detailNever shown

How somebody checks a document

Five steps, no account, no telephone call, nothing to install.

They scan the code, or open the check page A phone camera is enough. Anyone working from paper can instead go to our verification page and key the reference in by hand.
They enter three details The reference, plus the email address and telephone number belonging to the person the document was issued to. All three have to line up.
The system matches them exactly Comparison is done in a way that gives nothing away on a near miss. A wrong combination returns the same flat answer as a reference that never existed.
A status comes back immediately Whether the document is genuine, what kind it is, and whether it is still in force. Names appear only in obscured form.
The check is recorded Each successful confirmation is logged, which means a history exists showing that a document was presented and verified rather than merely claimed.

Requiring the email and telephone number is deliberate. It means a stranger who photographs your letter cannot look you up, while the person actually deciding about your home — who already holds your details — can confirm it in seconds.

Confirming a document without exposing the person

A verification service is easy to build badly. Publish a searchable list and you have created a directory of people with disabilities, browsable by anybody who guesses a reference. That failure is common enough that we designed around it from the beginning.

So the check is not a search. Nothing can be browsed and nothing is listed. A reference alone opens no door; the enquirer has to already hold two pieces of information about the holder before anything is returned at all.

Even then, what comes back is deliberately thin. Names appear with most characters replaced. No diagnosis, no clinical note, no assessment content and no correspondence is exposed, because none of that is any part of what the enquirer needs to know.

They asked one question — is this real — and they receive an answer to exactly that question and nothing else. Everything a housing provider is entitled to establish, they can establish here in under a minute.

The other things printed on the page

The credential block A bordered panel carrying the signing professional's licence number and the state that issued it. For someone holding credentials in several states, the one shown is the one covering your address rather than their home office.
The issuing date Printed plainly, because a great many disputes turn on when something was raised rather than on what it said. Keeping the date visible saves an argument later.
The document type Stated without ambiguity. An assessment letter is not an identity card and is not a registration entry, and the page says which one you are holding.
The scannable code Rendered at a size that survives photocopying and faxing, both of which still happen constantly in housing offices and neither of which is going away.
Nothing clinical No condition, no history, no notes from the assessment. What a provider may properly establish is narrow, and the document is built to contain exactly that and no more.

Why this matters more than any certificate

A large part of this industry sells registrations, certificates and identity cards. They photograph well and they confer nothing. No register exists that grants anybody a right, and a housing provider who understands the subject knows that, which is why producing one so often makes the conversation worse.

What genuinely helps is the opposite: a plain document, from a real professional credentialed where you live, that the recipient can independently confirm without taking your word or ours. Confirmable beats decorative every time.

That is the whole design principle. We are not asking a housing provider to trust us. We are handing them the means to check, and accepting that a service which can be checked will occasionally be checked and found wanting if we ever stop doing this properly.

Questions about verification

Does my landlord need an account to check it?
No. The check sits on an open page with nothing to sign up for and nothing to install. They need the reference from your document and the contact details you gave us, which they will already hold.
Will they see my diagnosis?
Never. The response carries a status, a document type, a date and obscured names. No clinical material of any kind is reachable through the check, and there is no path from a verification result to your file.
Can somebody look me up with just the reference?
No, and this is the point of requiring three fields. Without the matching email address and telephone number the reference returns nothing at all, and an incorrect combination is answered identically to one that does not exist.
What if I lose the paper copy?
The reference belongs to your record rather than to that sheet of paper, so a reissued copy carries the same one and any check performed earlier remains consistent. Sign in and download it again.
Does a check tell you who looked?
We record that a successful confirmation happened and when. That history exists so a pattern of checks can be evidenced later if a provider claims they were never shown anything.