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Articles

Is it better to claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Attendance Allowance (AA)?

18/02/2023 //  by DC-ADMIN

Is it better to claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Attendance Allowance (AA)?

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Attendance Allowance (AA) are two benefits designed to provide financial support to individuals with disabilities or long-term health conditions. While both benefits share some similarities, they differ in terms of eligibility criteria and application process. In this article, we will explore the criteria and application process for both benefits, as well as the key differences between them.

Criteria for Personal Independence Payment (PIP):

Personal Independence Payment is a benefit that helps people with the extra costs of long-term disability or health condition. To be eligible for PIP, you must meet the following criteria:

  • You must be aged between 16 and 66 years old.
  • You must have a long-term health condition or disability that affects your daily life, such as difficulty with mobility, daily living tasks or both.
  • You must have had your condition for at least three months and expect it to last for at least nine months.
  • You must have difficulty completing a range of activities, such as preparing food, washing and dressing yourself, communicating with others, managing medication, planning a journey or moving around.

Criteria for Attendance Allowance (AA):

Attendance Allowance is a benefit that helps people aged 67 and over who need help with their personal care. To be eligible for AA, you must meet the following criteria:

  • You must be aged 67 or over.
  • You must have a physical or mental disability that affects your daily life, such as difficulty with personal care.
  • You must have had your condition for at least six months.
  • You must need help or supervision with personal care, such as getting dressed, washing or going to the toilet.
  • If you are making your first application for a disability benefit after reaching state pension age, you can only claim AA.

The application process for PIP:

To apply for PIP, you can call the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or fill out an application form online. You will need to provide details about your condition and how it affects your daily life. You may also need to attend a face-to-face assessment with a healthcare professional.

The application process for AA:

To apply for AA, you can call the Attendance Allowance helpline or fill out an application form online. You will need to provide details about your condition and how it affects your daily life. You may also need to attend a face-to-face assessment with a healthcare professional.

Key differences between PIP and AA:

The key differences between PIP and AA are:

  • Eligibility criteria: PIP is for people aged 16 to 66 with long-term disabilities or health conditions, while AA is for people aged 67 and over who need help with personal care.
  • Assessment: The assessment for PIP is focused on how your condition affects your daily life, while the assessment for AA is focused on the help you need with personal care.
  • Components: There is a mobility component for PIP, but not for AA.

In summary, Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Attendance Allowance (AA) are two benefits designed to provide financial support to individuals with disabilities or long-term health conditions. While both benefits share some similarities, they differ in terms of eligibility criteria and application process. If you are unsure about which benefit you are eligible for or need help with the application process, it may be helpful to seek advice from a specialist in the area, such as a welfare rights advisor or a benefits specialist.

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Category: Articles

Can cancer patients get PIP?

15/02/2023 //  by DC-ADMIN

Can cancer patients get PIP?

As a firm specialising in Personal Independence Payment (PIP), we understand that being diagnosed with cancer can be a challenging time for individuals and their loved ones. One of the concerns that clients may have is whether or not they are eligible for PIP.

The answer to this question is that it depends on individual circumstances. PIP is a benefit for individuals who have a long-term health condition or disability, and it is designed to help them with the additional costs associated with their condition. Therefore, if you have been diagnosed with cancer and it has an impact on your daily life, you may be eligible for PIP.

There are two components of PIP: daily living and mobility. The daily living component is for those who need help with activities such as preparing food, washing and dressing, and managing medication. The mobility component is for those who have difficulty getting around, whether it be due to physical or cognitive impairments. Depending on your individual circumstances, you may be eligible for one or both of these components.

To determine your eligibility, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will consider how your condition affects you. They will assess your ability to carry out activities and how your condition affects your ability to engage with other people. They may also consider evidence from your doctor, specialist nurse or other healthcare professionals involved in your care.

It is important to note that PIP is not means-tested, so it does not depend on your income or savings. It is also not affected by any other benefits you may be receiving, such as Employment and Support Allowance or Universal Credit.

We understand that the process of applying for PIP can be daunting, especially during a difficult time such as a cancer diagnosis. That is why we are here to help. Our team can guide you through the process and ensure that you receive the support you are entitled to. We can help you with the application process, provide advice on what evidence to submit and represent you throughout the process.

In summary, if you have been diagnosed with cancer and it has an impact on your daily life, you may be eligible for PIP. The process of applying can be overwhelming, but we are here to help you every step of the way.

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Category: Articles

Can you study while on PIP?

18/01/2023 //  by DC-ADMIN

Can you study while on PIP?

There are two aspects to this, what the rules say about combining studying and receiving PIP, and then there are the practicalities and implications of combining the two.

If you are a student whose accommodation costs are wholly or partly met from a student grant or loan, or from a grant made to an educational institution, under regulation 28(2)(f) of the 2013 Regulations, then you are exempt from the rules about payment of the daily living component of PIP being suspended after being in a care home for 28 days.

There is no bar on receiving either component of PIP while studying full or part-time. We have dealt with enough PIP appeals involving students to know that the assessors and DWP decision makers will readily make assumptions about a student’s ability to walk, prepare food safely, to pay bills reliably, to see and hear, to think, to travel, to attend meetings with tutors and to generally organise themselves.

We are generally brought in when things have gone wrong and the client has had a decision that they believe is wrong. The contents of an assessment carried out by the college or university can be helpful. We would look at GP records, tutor assessments and take statements from house mates, tutors and other professionals, as well as family and friends.

Better still, recognise that these issues are likely to arise and approach us at the claim stage, so that the chances of having to cope with the stress of a wrong decision can be reduced. It could easily take over a year from beginning a claim to receiving arrears from a successful PIP appeal. During that time, you are likely to have no award at all. Importantly, this is your benefit and ideally, it is you who should have the payments, rather than a significant portion of them being paid to us in legal costs.

We identify where you should score points, and why you should score them. We can help you to appreciate where the DWP are likely to see a ‘conflict’ between your stated difficulties and what they believe your everyday life involves. These might be dealt with ‘head-on’ in the form content, making a misunderstanding less likely. We can talk to you about potential sources of supporting evidence to go in with the claim. We always go through the medical and other evidence brought to us by a client, because we have seen examples of appeal prospects being ruined by something sent in by the client before we became involved. In some cases, the advice to those clients has been that they will not achieve the outcome due to them because the damage is too great, so that the appeal has had to be abandoned and the client has lost out on the arrears. The best way forward for them has been to begin again, distancing themselves from the misleading negative evidence.

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Category: Articles

PIP assessment points

15/01/2023 //  by DC-ADMIN

PIP assessment points

Personal independence payment is a points-based disability benefit. By ‘points-based’ we mean that you will need to score a certain number of points to get an award.  So how do you score points, and how many do you need? Good questions; we see some daft headlines on news and other websites that say that there is money waiting for you if you have this or that medical condition. That is not how it works though. PIP entitlement is based on how you are affected by your disability or medical conditions. There is an exception to this statement, which is covered at the end of this article. 

No two people are affected in quite the same way by a medical condition, which is why the claim process tries to focus on how you are affected. The assessment is not an overall, or a subjective, assessment of whether things are difficult for you, whether you have help from family or friends, and it is not based on someone’s opinion of whether you are deserving or not. It is not based on financial need, so household income and savings are not asked about. You can be working full-time and/or have recently won the lottery, or equally, you can be in dire need of help – all are assessed by the same criteria.

What are these criteria?

The claim and assessment process looks at 10 activities that you would carry out at home, ‘daily living activities’, and 2 aspects of mobility, so something done outside the home. The 10 daily living activities are:

  • Preparing food
  • Taking nutrition, whether by tube or more usually, issues around eating and drinking.
  • Taking medication, which includes how home therapy is managed, and aspects of monitoring a health condition.
  • Washing and bathing, which is about bathing or showering. 
  • Managing toilet needs or incontinence.
  • Dressing and undressing
  • Communicating verbally
  • Reading and understanding what you have read.
  • Engaging with other people, face-to-face. 
  • Making budgeting decisions.

It is a similar story for the two Mobility activities, Planning and following journeys and Moving around. Broadly, the first is for those with difficulties caused by loss of vision, someone with relevant mental health difficulties; or, who needs to have someone with them as they follow the route of a journey, whether because of seizures, severe anxiety, or an inability to get around safely on their own. The last activity, Moving around, concerns the physical side of walking and it looks at the distance that you can walk on most days. You will be asked about walking aids that you use. It is another complex area, since the pain that you experience while walking is relevant, as are the stops you have to make, how often you can do that walking and the speed at which you walk. 

Under each of these headings, there are between 4 and 7 statements, or ‘descriptors’. The assessor and DWP decision maker will choose one of these descriptors for each of the 12 activities, and for every claimant. At one end of the spectrum is a descriptor that says that you can manage the activity, while at the other is a descriptor that says that you cannot do it at all. The ones in between describe various degrees of inability. 

Why do I need to know all this?

Looking at the descriptors for Preparing food should help to answer this. Knowing why and how you should score points under one of the headings will help ensure that you include what is relevant to your claim and to avoid including material that cannot affect or support your claim. 

  1. Can prepare and cook a simple meal unaided. 0 points
  2. Needs to use an aid or appliance to be able to either prepare or cook a simple meal. 2
  3. Cannot cook a simple meal using a conventional cooker, but is able to do so using a microwave. 2
  4. Needs prompting to be able to either prepare or cook a simple meal. 2
  5. Needs supervision or assistance to either prepare or cook a simple meal. 4
  6. Cannot prepare and cook food. 8

If more than one of the above descriptors applies to you, then the higher score applies. There are websites and sections of specialist books which help by explaining how to interpret the words and phrases included in the descriptors. Words such as ‘supervision’, ‘assistance’ and ‘simple meal’ are defined in the PIP Regulations (an online search will take you to Part 1 of the 2013 Regulations on the gov.uk website. Many other concepts are defined and explained by decisions of the Upper Tribunal, whose decisions are binding on the local tribunals that would hear your appeal, and on DWP decision makers – this means that they cannot choose to do their own thing, they are ‘bound’ to interpret the law as laid down by the Upper Tribunal. These include important decisions such as how to assess ‘risk’, an example would be how a claim should be assessed for someone who could have a seizure while cooking, even though this is unlikely to happen. Can descriptor c) apply if you do not have a microwave? The answer is NO, which comes from the Upper Tribunal. You will see from Preparing food that it is not only physical limitations that can score points, but also mental health and cognitive/thinking difficulties as well. 

OK, I see the importance of understanding the test, but it feels overwhelming

Looking in detail at even this one activity of Preparing food is beyond the scope of this article, so get help. The best option is to work on your claim with someone who knows the test and what everything means. You live with how your disability or medical conditions affect you, and you have almost certainly made adjustments to reduce the impact. Perhaps you have to sit down peel and chop vegetables, or you buy ready-prepared vegetables because you can no longer do that peeling and chopping. You might have been using aids or appliances to compensate for your reduced grip or strength. Perhaps you gave up on cooking because it became too dangerous. Does someone do all this for you now, or do you get by on ‘junk food’, crisps, sandwiches and chocolate? The point is that an experienced person will ask you questions under all these headings that you might not ask yourself, because your adjustments have become normal everyday life for you. 

Where else can I get help?

The help could be someone in a local or national advice agency. There are really good people in such agencies, and there are people who should not be doing the work. There is a lot at stake with your claim, so it is reasonable to ask politely about their experience and/or training. Consider asking if they have done PIP tribunal appeals and whether you will receive a copy of the form content. Will they provide written advice on where you should score points, and what award you ought to receive? You can draw your own conclusions if they seem defensive. Similarly, if they will not be able to tell you what the result of your claim should be, once the form is filled in, how are you supposed to know if the DWP made the right decision? It would be a mistake to think that the Department and the assessors they sub-contract to are the specialist and will always get it right. As with anything, they include skilled and experienced professionals, as well as those who should not be doing the work. Which will you get?

We offer a national service but we charge for our work, and even though we accept payment of our fee by instalments, we recognise that our service will not be for everyone. You may want to, or need to, use a local service; we hope that you will be better equipped to assess these services. An alternative is to use help sheets that can be found online. These suggest questions that you should ask yourself. This option will work for some, but not for all. Certainly, any help is better than going it alone, for almost everyone. 

You did not tell me how many points I need

True; a score of between 0 and 7 points, for daily living or mobility, will mean no award is made. Between 8 and 11 points will give you the ‘standard rate of that component (daily living or mobility), while 12 or more points will give you the enhanced rate.

When is PIP not points-based?

We said that there was an exception, which is that you will be passported to an award of enhanced rate of the daily living component if you are not expected to live for more than six months, and your consultant has signed a form DS1500 to confirm this. If you also have a claim for the mobility component of PIP, this is processed in the normal way, it is not passported. 

You will find helpful information elsewhere on our website, as we hope that this article will have been helpful. 

Recent Posts

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  • Can cancer patients get PIP?
  • Can you study while on PIP?
  • PIP assessment points
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  • Do I still get PIP in a care home?
  • PIP tips & tricks
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  • How much is PIP?
  • Can I get a mobility car on standard rate PIP assessment?
  • Do I have to tell PIP if I start work?
  • PIP Supersession Requests
  • PIP Form Help
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  • PIP payments backdated
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  • How to do a PIP reconsideration
  • Enhanced PIP Benefits
  • PIP Claim – Change of Circumstances
  • What other benefits can I claim with PIP?
  • What illness qualifies for PIP?
  • PIP & ESA appeal over 29 months
  • PIP for Depression and Anxiety
  • PIP Appeal in Sutton
  • How long does it take to claim PIP?
  • Does Carers Allowance Affect PIP?
  • This PIP appeal in North London needed Pebbles help
  • PIP appeal hearing date arrives before the PIP appeal papers
  • The impact of Fibromyalgia on a PIP Claim
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  • Section IV: The PIP appeal process and alleviating your stress levels
  • Section III: The PIP appeal process and alleviating your stress levels
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PIP and carer’s allowance

18/12/2022 //  by DC-ADMIN

PIP and carer’s allowance

This topic relates to two very different benefits, personal independence payment, a disability benefit paid to someone who is severely affected by a disability or illness, and carer’s allowance (CA) which can be paid to someone who provides them with care.

Who can claim carer's allowance?

Let’s take a look at who can claim CA. It is not enough that someone needs looking after and someone looks after them; there are conditions that have to be met by both the person receiving the care and the person providing the care. The person who has the illness or disability must be on a ‘qualifying benefit’, For the purposes of this article, we are talking here about the standard or enhanced rate of the daily living component of PIP. Having an award of even the enhanced rate of the mobility component has no relevance here, so scoring 7 points for daily living but having 12 or more points for mobility will not allow someone to claim carer’s allowance. Other ‘qualifying benefits’ include an award of middle or highest rate disability living allowance (DLA) care component, and either rate of attendance allowance.

That is the only condition attached to the person receiving the care but there are more conditions for the person who is considering claiming CA. They cannot be ‘gainfully employed’, since CA is one of the ‘income replacement benefits’. A carer’s allowance claimant cannot earn more than £132 a week. This figure is correct at the time of writing, in the year April 2022 to April 2023. Earnings up to that amount do not have to be disclosed to the DWP but if it is exceeded, there is no entitlement to CA in that week. There are rules that govern how that weekly income is calculated where actual earnings vary, so get advice from a good source if your situation is other than straight forward.

No upper age limit

You must be at least 16 to claim carer’s allowance but there is now no upper age limit. Also, you cannot be in ‘full-time education’. Whether the course counts as being a full-time one can come down to the hours involved and the mix of ‘supervised study’ and ‘unsupervised study’, so you should not automatically accept that it is full-time because the university describes it as such, and therefore a bar to you receiving carer’s allowance, until you have had specialist advice. The DWP could certainly get this distinction wrong. The benefit will not be paid to a ‘person subject to immigration control’, so it is pretty much restricted to British citizens. You could be in the same family as the person receiving care, or you could be a friend, a neighbour, or you might have no relationship at all. 

Entitlement to carer’s allowance

What the care consists of and how much of your time is involved is also relevant. The rules say that the care must be ‘regular and substantial’, defined as 35 hours or more in ‘a week’ (running from Sunday to Saturday). Entitlement to carer’s allowance depends in part on this 35 hour or more condition being met every week, you cannot average it out with more in some weeks making up for weeks in which less than 35 hours of care is provided. The care need not be manual handling or physically helping them though, so that supervising the person, encouraging them and even getting ready for them to arrive and clearing up after their visit counts towards the 35 hours. You might be caring for more than one person, and meet all the requirements for both, but only one lot of carer’s allowance can be claimed (see below for a possible exception).

12 weeks without entitlement

Even though regular and substantial care must be given, the rules do permit breaks from caring of up to 12 weeks without entitlement to carer’s allowance being affected. It will depend on why there is a break, how long the regular care has been in place before the break and time spent in hospital or similar, so get specialist advice. 

It is worth remembering that overpayments of benefits, including carer’s allowance, can be recovered where the DWP establish that the rules should not have allowed payment in the first place. Similarly, if the person who has been getting PIP or the other qualifying benefit, no longer has that award, then entitlement to CA also ends. If there was a delay in telling the DWP that the award of the qualifying benefit award had ended, not only would this create a recoverable overpayment, but if the Department consider that you knew but knowingly did nothing, they could bring a criminal prosecution for fraud. The DWP sometimes make decisions that the disability benefit claimant exaggerated their difficulties to get the award. They can end entitlement and decide that the money paid from the start must be repaid. This will often be in addition to bringing a prosecution for fraud. It follows that there should have been no carer’s allowance award. Such cases are rare but get specialist advice if you are affected by such a decision.

Different rules for Scotland

Different rules for carers’ benefits will apply in Scotland. One difference is likely to be that more money can be claimed where more than one disabled child is being cared for, so get advice if you are making a claim as a carer in Scotland.

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Do I still get PIP in a care home?

15/12/2022 //  by DC-ADMIN

Do I still get PIP in a care home?

The mobility component of personal independence payment is not affected by going into a care home, regardless of how long you stay. After the first 28 days in a care home, your award of the daily living component is likely to be affected, but it depends, so read to the end of this article.

Qualifying services

One key thing to find out and be clear about is what legal provisions have been used to fund the costs of any qualifying services. For our purposes, a ‘care home’ is somewhere that provides accommodation, as well as nursing or personal care. For PIP, the ‘qualifying services’ are those that cover the accommodation itself, your board and your personal care.

It is worth noting that these qualifying services only affect your PIP if they are provided under certain Acts of Parliament, so be sure to find out what provisions have been used in your case. Even then, there are exceptions, so keep reading. 

Which provisions count?

If one of the following Acts are used in your case, your PIP daily living component will normally be affected:

  • Part III of the National Assistance Act 1948
  • the Mental Health Act 1983
  • Sections 59 and 59A of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968
  • Part 4 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014
  • Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003
  • the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002
  • section 57 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001
  • Part 1 of the Care Act 2014  
  • for our purposes with PIP, any other Acts that relate to people with disabilities or young people, education or training.

That looks pretty comprehensive, and in the majority of cases, the council will use one of these to pay for the services that the care home provides but they can also use housing legislation or the Local Government Act 1972 to cover the cost, and if they do, then your PIP is unaffected. Also, it was held in a 1997 case that an appeal tribunal has the power to decide that someone’s placement is being paid for using a different legal provision than the one stated by the local authority. A huge amount of money can be involved, so that if your circumstances are at all unusual, get specialist help to make sure that the council has not used the wrong legislation. 

What are the exceptions?

For our purposes, the daily living component of PIP remains in payment to a student, where the accommodation is wholly or partly paid for using a student grant or loan, or if they are using a grant from educational institutions. Your PIP is not affected if you are terminally ill and are in a hospice, unless that hospice is a hospital within the NHS. You will need to have told the DWP about entering a hospice, preferably in writing. Neither is your PIP daily living component affected if you are 16 or 17, and you are receiving services from the local authority in a private home, rather than in a care setting. This could be with a relative, a family or another suitable person. The other major exception is for those who are ‘self-funding’.

What counts as self-funding?

Your PIP will not be affected if you are paying for all of your ‘qualifying services’ yourself, even if this is with help from someone else or a charity. It does not matter who owns the care home, or whether DWP benefits or credits such as universal credit or pension credit are being put towards the cost. What counts is who is paying for the qualifying services, so that you can still be self-funding if the local council arranged your placement and the contract; what counts is that you are paying for those ‘qualifying services’. 

What if I cannot pay until my house is sold?

If you are likely to become self-funding when your property has sold, then payment of your PIP daily living component should be suspended. When the sale goes through and you repay the council what it has paid so far, inform the DWP and they should both reinstate your ongoing PIP payments, and pay to you the arrears that have built up since the suspension. If the Department closed your claim, rather than suspending it, you should not accept this. Instead, ask them to revise the decision to close the claim, on the grounds that their decision involved an ‘official error’. 

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PIP tips & tricks

18/05/2022 //  by DC-ADMIN

PIP tips & tricks

We are often asked by clients “How can I improve my chances of success at getting the correct award of PIP? “.  In general, there is no single answer that can be applied as each claimant’s situation is unique to their own application.

Firstly, we should start by assessing what evidence we can provide to the assessor and Decision Maker at the initial claim stage to assist them in making the correct decision.

Medical Evidence

GP

Medical evidence is something that we would always advise someone to source for any stage of PIP and it can be gathered from numerous sources, the most common medical professional we suggest would be your GP. Firstly, we would suggest requesting the release of your medical records, this could be as far back as they go, or just the last 3 years. Either way, they will undoubtedly be very helpful in a majority of cases.

Hospital

You may currently be under a consultant at the hospital that has a very good insight into your life and how you are affected, if this is the case, they are often more than willing to supply you with a supporting letter listing your conditions and how you are affected.

If you have had any scans at the hospital that have proved to be helpful to medical professionals, it may be worth contacting them to request a copy of the scan. Again, this is helpful in supporting your claim by providing credibility to support your claimed restrictions.

If you have been admitted to A&E and you have been required to stay in for any amount of time, this will have triggered a discharge summary of your stay. We often find that clients do not gather these at the initial application stage as they are not thought of, however, on countless occasions they have proved to be invaluable when supporting a claim at the appeal stage.

Employment and Support Allowance

If you are currently in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance, you are likely to have gone through an assessment for the benefit, this is called an ESA85. It is important to note that while the qualifying criteria for Personal Independence Payment and Employment and Support Allowance are not the same, they do have similarities. Due to this, we would advise that you request a copy of the most recent assessment from ESA so that it can be supplied as evidence to PIP.

Disability Living Allowance

We understand that Disability Living Allowance is now only obtainable up to the age of 16 years old. However, it is very common for people to move across to PIP later than others or directly after their 16th birthday. In a very similar way to Employment and Support Allowance, the qualifying criteria is not the exact same. However, we can again draw several comparisons between Personal Independence Payment and Disability Living Allowance. For that reason, even if you were on the lowest rates of Disability Living Allowance, it would make sense to call and request a review of your award and an assessment report.

Local Council

It is common for a lot of clients to have undergone an Occupational Therapy assessment; in a vast majority of cases, these assessments prove to be immensely helpful in supporting a clients claim. The purpose of an Occupation Therapist is to assess you, this is typically in your home and the aim of this assessment is to consider what aids or adaptions can be made to make your day-to-day life more convenient. It may be that they have suggested you need a perching stool while preparing and cooking a meal, or that you need an electric bath seat to manage to get in and out of the bath. Our suggestion on this front is to call your local council and request a copy of this assessment. If this is the first you have heard about Occupational Therapists, this would be a good time to call your local council to get the ball rolling.

The final piece of evidence we would suggest gathering is a copy of a blue badge if this is something you have been accepted for, this would be more supportive for Activities surrounding mobility.

Other sources of medical evidence

We have suggested multiple options that you may want to gather evidence from, however, you may also have a list of other medical professionals that could be helpful. This could be a Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Chiropractor, Physiotherapist, Nutritionist, etc.

Non-Medical Evidence

Non-medical evidence can vary from person to person, but the most common form would be a witness statement. It is important that we go over some details here, if a witness statement is being provided to you by a family member, friend or colleague, then they need to be in a position where they understand what is relevant and what is not relevant. For example, a witness could provide a statement 5 pages long, however, if the 5 pages are full of information that is not entirely relevant to a specific Activity, then it is a poorly missed opportunity. At the initial application stage, we advise that statements should be provided if possible and will put together a document to assist the witness in providing relevant information. At the mandatory reconsideration and appeal stage, we speak with the witness ourselves and take the statement over a conversation. This has proved to be invaluable over time, not only are we providing the assessor, Decision Maker or tribunal panel members with another form of credibility, but we are also providing them with another insight into the clients’ lives that you would struggle to obtain without it.

Representation

Ultimately, the best tips and tricks I can provide to you will only get you so far. The PIP process can be a gruelling and unforgiving process that can wear down the strongest of people until they have no fight left to give. Our advice to anybody dealing with PIP whether it was a fresh claim, award review, change of circumstances, mandatory reconsideration, appeal or application to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, is to always get help. We understand that getting assistance from a professional representative may be out of your price range, we try our best to accommodate this by offering extremely flexible monthly instalments on all of our services. However, if you still feel like this was not affordable to you, there are other options available to help you no matter your position. The Citizens Advice Bureau are often willing to help and our experience with clients tells us that try their best. However, their knowledge can be limited at times, and they are under immense pressure to get a lot of work out, due to this the quality of their work can be poorer at times. You may have a medical professional that has offered to assist you with the application form, this is also an offer that you could take up to increase your chances. No matter what, get some form of assistance, even if this has to come from a friend or family member, there are questions that need to be asked that would not occur to you without another person looking in.

Sending the form

While application forms are turning to online applications, we appreciate this may not suit everyone’s preference due to technical difficulties. If you are in possession of a physical form and you are ready to send it off, you have the opportunity of relying on the pre-paid envelope that they include with the form. It is important to note that while this will work a majority of the time, it occurs far too many times that the DWP claim the form has not been received sending alarms running through your brain. To ease these concerns, our suggestion is to always send the form into the DWP first class, signed for. You are given a tracking reference code for this, and you are then able to be certain that it has been received by the processing centre. We would also advise that you make copies of any evidence you are sending to them as they will not be returning the originals to you as well as making a copy of the form you have completed.

Assessments

It is hard to advise people on an assessment without knowing what their claim surrounds and what they should be ensuring the assessor has understood. However, there are a couple of points that can be used across the assessment that will apply to all people.

Answers

At no point should you view the assessment as a yes or no quiz. In doing this, your answers lack detail and the relevant information you need to get across is not passed across for each Activity.

While we would never advise anyone to lie to an assessor, it is important to not make the mistake of doing the opposite. We understand that pride may get in the way of explaining what life for you is truly like on a daily basis, however, the assessors are certainly not grasping at every opportunity to score points.

We hope that these tips and tricks have been useful, let us know how you get on.

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What grants can I get on PIP?

15/05/2022 //  by DC-ADMIN

What grants can I get on PIP?

People ask this question but we are not aware of any grants that are automatically triggered by having a PIP award. Having an award will however help to unlock money from a variety of sources. It is not something that we involve ourselves in directly but there is much to be said for investigating the huge number of charities, large and small.

For example, most of the water authorities have charitable bodies attached to them. I used to provide money advice, a very long time ago, and secured significant sums for clients to help with, or to clear their arrears. The same goes for energy providers, but these must be under huge pressure these days. The relevance of PIP, and possibly of a sickness benefit too, is that providing confirmation of these will be persuasive to a charity. They would be entitled to ask themselves why there is no award of PIP, or child DLA, if the medical problems are as bad as claimed.

Search online for ‘charitable grants’ and you will find sites that will do much of the leg work for you. There are over 160,000 charities in the UK. Some are set up to help people with specific medical problems, disability or illness, whereas others are local to a particular area and this is why some sites will ask you to provide a post code. There is something to be said for an approach to such a charity coming from a support worker, a social worker, a community psychiatric nurse or a money advice worker, but if these do not exist, then all you have to risk is the cost of a stamp.

Such grants are not there to provide a regular source of income but can help with a particular one-off payment. You, or one of your dependents might have an emergency or be faced with some unplanned expense that your budget cannot cope with. Perhaps your cooker or washing machine has stopped working or has become unsafe.

You might need clothes, or equipment for the home, or you could be faced by home maintenance costs that are beyond your ability to cover. Be guided by the terms of the charitable trust – if their ‘rules’ cover the type of need that you have, then you should try. Some charities are over-subscribed but others are little known and would be very pleased to hear from you.

They exist to help, so take the time to apply in the way that their trust requires. A personal letter may be all that is needed, but some will want to hear from a professional such as a GP and some charities will have designed a form to help ensure that all the information that they need is supplied first time.

So, maximise your income by using one of the benefit checkers that you will find online. Take time to use one of the charitable grant search tools that you will also find online. Finally, make sure that your PIP award is right for your current circumstances – the benefit checkers cannot do this.

They are really useful for checking monetary entitlement but not for assessing complex benefits such as child DLA or PIP.  Do not make the mistake of thinking that the Department for Work and Pensions knows best.

In an ideal world, you would be able to rely on their expertise, so that if they decided that you were not eligible, then that was the right decision, or that the award that they did make will accurately reflect your entitlement. Unfortunately, that is not always the reality.

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  • Do I have to tell PIP if I start work?
  • PIP Supersession Requests
  • PIP Form Help
  • PIP mandatory reconsideration
  • PIP payments backdated
  • Challenging a PIP tribunal decision
  • How to do a PIP reconsideration
  • Enhanced PIP Benefits
  • PIP Claim – Change of Circumstances
  • What other benefits can I claim with PIP?
  • What illness qualifies for PIP?
  • PIP & ESA appeal over 29 months
  • PIP for Depression and Anxiety
  • PIP Appeal in Sutton
  • How long does it take to claim PIP?
  • Does Carers Allowance Affect PIP?
  • This PIP appeal in North London needed Pebbles help
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Category: Articles

How much is PIP?

18/04/2022 //  by DC-ADMIN

How much is PIP?

When assessing how much you can get from personal independence payment (PIP), it initially comes down to the two components of personal independence payment (PIP). We have the daily living component and the component, there are two rates of each component, the standard rate, and the enhanced rate. While you must satisfy the same number of points on each component, the amount of money you stand to receive is quite different.

Daily Living

Firstly, to understand the different rates you may be awarded, we need to understand how many points are needed to be entitled to the payments.

Scoring between 0 and 7 points will not be enough to satisfy an award, you will therefore not be entitled to any money for the daily living component.

If you score between 8 and 11 points, this will entitle you to the standard rate of the daily living component, it will trigger the base rate of payments for this award.

If you are to get the maximum amount of money for the daily living component, you need to score 12 points or more to be entitled to the enhanced rate.

For the standard rate of daily living, the payment will be £61.85 a week becoming a total of £247.40 a month. If we look at a full year, 52 weeks at a rate of £61.85 would be £3,216.20.

For the enhanced rate, the payments are slightly higher at £92.40 a week becoming a total of £369.60 for the month. If we again look at a full year of the enhanced rate of daily living, this would be £4,804.80.

You can start to see how a small difference between 11 points and 12 points can actually result in a large difference over the course of a year. It may be that you are on the incorrect award, we would be happy at that point to advise you on what your options are moving forward and how we may be able to get you from the standard rate to the enhanced rate.

The difference between the standard rate and the enhanced rate of the daily living component becomes £30.55 a week, £122.20 a month and £1,588.60 per year.

Mobility

Again, the same rules apply to the points required here and what these points will trigger in terms of your personal independence payment points.

Scoring between 0 and 7 points will not be enough to satisfy an award, you will therefore not be entitled to any money for the mobility component.

If you score between 8 and 11 points, this will entitle you to the standard rate of the personal independence payment mobility component, it will trigger the base rate of payments for this award.

If you are to get the maximum amount of money for the mobility component, you need to score 12 points or more to be entitled to the enhanced rate.

If you have been awarded the standard rate of the mobility component, you will trigger payments that begin with £24.45 a week becoming a total of £97.80 a month. For a period of 52 weeks, the standard rate will bring you £1,271.40.

For the enhanced rate of the mobility component, the award is worth a total of £64.50 a week becoming a total of £250.20 a month. For the entire year, the enhanced rate of the mobility component will pay you £3,354.00.

You can see how the difference is even greater for the mobility component than it is for the daily living component, let’s take a look at what the differences become for a week, a month and a year.

The difference between the standard rate and the enhanced rate of the mobility component becomes £40.05 for a week, £152.40 a month and a rather large £2,082.60 for the entire year.

Awards of both daily living and mobility

For the standard rate of both daily living and mobility, it could be worth £86.30 a week, £345.20 a month and a total of £4,487.60 for the year.

If you find yourself with the enhanced personal independence payment rate of both daily living and mobility, it could be worth £156.90 a week, £619.80 a month and £8,158.80 for the entire year.

Backdated Payments

The wait to get the first payment from the moment you called the DWP can often be long, for a claim you may be waiting 6 or 7 months, for a reconsideration it may be closer to 12 months and for an appeal we would expect an average of 14 months or more from the date of claim to a successful award. While that waiting period isn’t easy, when you are given an award the DWP will backdate this award to the date of claim which can often result in substantial arrears being received in the first payment.

The payments will then continue every 4 weeks after the initial payment of arrears.

Even if you can show that you would have scored the points needed for an award of personal independence payment (PIP) before you did make a claim, it is not possible under any circumstances to backdate your claim. Any award will date back to the date when you either phoned them to begin the claim or when you began an online claim. If you succeed with a claim and have a history of one or more failed claims, that could be a different matter. It is outside the scope of this article but search on our site for the article that explains how you might be able to re-open an old claim, whether you stopped at the claim stage, or after a mandatory reconsideration, or even after a tribunal appeal. It is only fair to say that most people will not be able to succeed with one of these ‘any time reviews’ but if the circumstances of your case do allow you to use this provision, the arrears could be significant.

An award of PIP can increase your entitlement to other benefits

One thing can lead to another with social security benefits, and having any award of the daily living component of personal independence payment (PIP) can trigger entitlement to additional employment and support allowance (ESA) or income support, but this does not apply to universal credit. Please note that the entitlement can be triggered but that since PIP and the other offices do not necessarily talk to each other, actually receiving payment of the extra money might need a phone call from you.

The extra elements that can be payable as part of your ESA or income support are called ‘premiums’ and there are many different premiums covering a variety of circumstances. We are talking specifically here about a ‘severe disability premium’ (SDP) being triggered by having an award of either the standard or the enhanced rate of the daily living component. No such premium is triggered by having a personal independence payment (PIP) mobility award. There are a number of other conditions that have to be met to get the SDP, including no one claiming carers allowance for looking after you and there being no ‘non-dependent’ living with you. If you are part of a couple, then in most cases, they would also have to be on a qualifying benefit, which excludes most couples. If you suspect that you have been missing out on the SDP, or the ‘enhanced disability premium’ that is triggered by having the enhanced rate of personal independence payment (PIP) daily living component, you should call either ESA or income support, as appropriate. Arrears of a premium should be paid back to when the personal independence payment (PIP) award started.

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Can I get a mobility car on standard rate PIP assessment?

15/04/2022 //  by DC-ADMIN

Can I get a mobility car on standard rate PIP assessment?

We are talking here about getting a car using the Motability scheme, while having an award of the standard rate of the mobility component of personal independence payment (PIP). You probably know that Motability is a charity, not part of the Government or the DWP. The scheme allows for a qualifying award of PIP to be paid directly to Motability, and you may have to make additional payments to top up the personal independence payment (PIP) award, depending on the chosen vehicle.

The problem

The straight answer to the question in the title of this article, is no, you would need an award of the enhanced rate of PIP mobility, and to have at least 12 months of that award left.

The solution

In our experience, it is more difficult to get the right award for mobility than it is for a client to get the right award for the daily living component of PIP. This means that it is quite likely that you are on the wrong rate of mobility, or that you were wrongly refused an award at all; Why is it more difficult to get what you are entitled to?

  • The daily living component is made up of 10 activities, so you have 10 potential sources of points. Statistically, there is more room for the DWP to get your assessment wrong but still get enough right for you to reach the 12 points needed for an award of the daily living component. Contrast this with the 2 activities that make up the mobility component – two chances to score points towards the 12 needed for enhanced rate and access to the Motability scheme.
  • Essentially, the first of those two mobility activities concerns mental health or cognitive/thinking issues. Someone with uncontrolled epilepsy is likely to be correctly assessed for mobility and they get 12 points. A person with visual problems is also more likely to be assessed correctly. We find that it is the mental health and thinking limitations that are more likely to be scored too low or to be completely misunderstood. See below for more detail.
  • The second mobility activity looks at your physical ability to walk. There are various reasons for this assessment often going wrong. For most people, the 12 points would be awarded if walking ability is no more than 20 metres. But the assessment should be about more than just a one-off walk of 20 metres, and do you know what 20 metres looks like anyway?

For the reasons listed above, your award of standard rate mobility could well be wrong, so to get access to the Motability scheme, you are going to have to fix your award first. See below for how to do this and why it is not nearly as risky as you may be thinking.

Looking at the two mobility activities

Planning and following journeys 

It is worth remembering that with PIP, you can add together the score for both parts of mobility, so physical and mental health difficulties. The Government did not intend that people should score 10 or 12 points due to the effects of anxiety. The ruling to that effect was made in an Upper Tribunal in the case of MH and the Government responded to that ruling by trying to change the law. That new legislation was struck down as being discriminatory so that the ruling in MH again became the law.

There are different ways in which the assessor and decision maker can get the wrong assessment of how a person is affected by anxiety..

  • They regularly award 4 points for descriptor (b) “Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant.”

This descriptor would be the right choice if ‘all’ the claimant needed was to be prompted to get through the door to leave home, and they could then go on their way independently. We do not see many people where that is the case. We see many more people who then go on to need someone with them to allow them to follow the route of a journey without being overwhelmed. If that had been accepted by the DWP, that would have scored 10 or 12 points, depending on whether there was a difference between their ability to manage alone on familiar or unfamiliar routes (see below).

  • The three Upper Tribunal judges who decided the case of MH said that the threshold for scoring points due to anxiety is “a very high one”. You often see that quoted by the Department in appeal bundles, but we see many cases where they have misunderstood how the claimant is affected, or they wrongly assess whether the client would experience ‘overwhelming psychological distress’ if they were not accompanied. The case of MH gives helpful examples of the level of difficulty that falls short of qualifying, but we see many examples of where the assessor and decision maker set the bar much too high and deny people the points that they should have.
  • Of course, getting 10 points for descriptor (d) “Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person”, is very helpful, but those 10 points will not give an award of enhanced rate mobility, without also adding points due to physical difficulties. We see cases where there are a few familiar places that the client can get to on their own, perhaps to the local shop and to the GP surgery. The DWP are quite capable of latching onto that ability and using it as a reason to award 10 points for a need to be accompanied on the route of an unfamiliar journey, but crucially, denying them the 12 points that would have been awarded if it had been accepted that they were restricted in the same way for most familiar journeys. A different Upper Tribunal decision makes it clear that being able to get to a limited number of familiar places does not prevent a claimant from scoring 12 points for descriptor (f) that relates to the route of familiar journeys.
  • Turning to the physical side of walking, let us look at what difficulties should be taken into account. Your claim is at least straightforward if you cannot walk 20 metres, which is the length of two full-size buses parked nose to tail. However, life can be more complicated than that. The law states that other limitations are also relevant. Someone who can manage that distance but only while experiencing bad pain should be considered unable to walk the 20 metres, because they are not walking “to an acceptable standard”. If you can achieve the 20 metres but it takes very much longer than the next person, more than twice as long and should be considered unable to manage the 20 metres, because they cannot achieve the distance “within a reasonable time period”. The client who can manage the 20 metres but who could not do so again without recovering for an extended period should be considered unable to achieve the distance, because they cannot do so “repeatedly” (defined as, “as often as reasonably required”). The issue with PIP is always what the claimant can do on the majority of days, at least 50% of the time, as the law puts it. So, if, overall, you have more of the bad than better days, it is not your best day performance that is relevant. In practice, the DWP might apply the 50% rule correctly but we have never seen assessors or decision makers correctly apply any of these other rules correctly. “But if that’s what the law says ..” We know but that is how it is in practice. There is a reasonable chance that a tribunal will apply the law correctly but not the assessor or the DWP.

Your options for how to get the right mobility award

You probably have an existing award but if not, then get help with your new claim. Claiming with experienced and professional help will undoubtedly increase your chances of getting the right outcome first time, hopefully avoiding the need to challenge a decision. With all due respect, how would you know if the Department has made the right decision unless you have help? You are the expert on how you are affected but any faith in the DWP’s ability to ask all the right questions and apply the law correctly to those facts is in our opinion misplaced. Certainly, there are good assessors and decision makers out there, but we see evidence of poor work too often to have complete faith in the consistency of the system.

Could I lose what I have now if I ask for more?

Clients regularly tell us that they are worried about challenging a decision or reporting a change in their circumstances, for fear of losing the award they have now. Indeed, it is not uncommon for this to be put to clients as a possible outcome by the PIP agent that they speak to on the phone. If you ask for a reconsideration or report a change, they do have the power to leave things as they are, to add points or to take away some or all existing points. Almost without exception, they will only take points away if the evidence points that way, and any professional worth his or her salt is not going to let that happen. We have decades of experience and we can only recall one case where the client lost points, which was fixed on appeal. So, coming away worse off should not be a concern, provided that you get experienced and professional help.

Report a change of circumstances or wait for the renewal?

With that possibility out of the way, should you let your award run its course or should you report a change of circumstances? Two comments here; firstly, the guidance that came with your decision tells you to inform them of a (relevant) change to your circumstances, so they expect you to tell them, rather than wait. Secondly, if you are right in saying that your needs have changed, then you would be giving away money that should be yours if you wait for the Department to invite you to renew your claim. It could also look a little odd if you wait to tell them that things have worsened for you on a renewal claim, perhaps a little convenient. In their place, I might ask myself why, if needs have increased, they did not tell us sooner, why the claimant has waited until the renewal.

How do I know if the award I have is right or wrong?

The only way for us to know whether your award is right, and how strong a claim you have to a higher award, is for us to take you through the PIP test, asking all the questions that we would ask for the claim or reconsideration, exploring your answers with you so that we fully understand your needs and can properly advise you on how easy it would be to get what you are entitled to. Advising you on the points you ought to score is only part of it; we apply our experience to the information we gather, because you need to know the real-world chances of success. Some types of need are more likely to be accepted by the DWP than others, and it is the same with tribunals where we are talking about an appeal. We make a charge for that service, and that charge is then deducted in full from the fee for the piece of work if you go ahead with the mandatory reconsideration or change of circumstances claim.

And there you have it, how to get from where you are to where you should be, which could be the Motability car that you need.

Good luck.

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Category: Articles

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