Hello Mike
My client has been turned down for attendance allowance. What are the criteria?
Thanks
Jacqui
Hello Jacqui
Attendance Allowance is a benefit for people who have care needs who claim after reaching Pension Age
Like PIP and DLA, Attendance Allowance looks at your needs most days. It is not based on your worst day
There are two ways of qualifying for Attendance Allowance: Help and supervision.
For the supervision rule to work, you must be able to identify something that causes a substantial danger, and then you must be able to explain that because of this danger you need another person with you pretty-much all of the time (continually) to prevent harm. The supervision rule rarely works.
The rule about help (or, as the law puts it, attention) says that you can have Attendance Allowance if you need frequent help from another person to look after yourself, throughout the day
It does not cover help looking after your home or doing domestic tasks. It is only about looking after yourself.
Help can mean physical help or it can mean spoken-help where someone prompts, remind or encourages you to do things.
When the DWP assesses you, they should look at the help that you need not the help that you actually get.
When they assess what you need, they can take account of aids that you do use or that you could use to reduce the need for help from another person.
For example, I may say that I need help using the toilet at night, but the DWP would argue that I don’t need someone to help me because I could use a urine bottle
When they assess what help you need they should take account of pain, discomfort, tiredness and recovery.
For example, it may be that I can independently go to the lavatory, but it takes me a long time to do so, and it causes me significant pain.
In this case it would be reasonable to say that I need help, even though I do not actually get help.
In your client’s case they said: if you take your time, resting between tasks and using suitable aids you should be able to manage most of your personal care needs…
Maybe this is right.
On the other hand personal care takes an unreasonable time, or causes pain or discomfort, or necessitates an extended period of recovery then legally he could reasonably be said to need help and to qualify for Attendance Allowance.
So, for your client:
ignoring housework and focussing on self-care
ignoring the night-time needs* and focussing on the daytime
ignoring things like the fear of future strokes or other reasons why he might want to have someone with him
But:
taking into account the length of time that self-care tasks take
taking into account pain and discomfort caused by self-care tasks
Does he need help to look after himself?
* What’s with the asterisk
The amount of attendance allowance that you get depends on whether you need help or supervision during the day, or the night or during both the day and the night – most days and nights.
The supervision rule for the night-time is slightly different to the daytime rule described above. It considers whether you need someone awake for a prolonged period or at frequent intervals to watch over you.
The night-time care rule looks at whether you need prolonged help or help more than once during the night.
The DWP says that prolonged means 20 minutes or longer.