You can claim PIP Daily Living Component if your physical or mental condition limits your ability to carry out some everyday tasks.
You can claim PIP Mobility Component if your condition affects your ability to get around.
The purpose of PIP is to enable you to live, as far as possible, the life you wish to lead.
The PIP Scoring System
PIP Daily Living Component is assessed by scoring your ability to do ten activities:
- Making a simple cooked one-course meal from scratch – not just heating a ready-meal
- Eating – Cutting your food up, getting it to your mouth, chewing and swallowing. Whether your diet is a good, healthy one is irrelevant.
- Managing medication and home therapy
- Washing and bathing – looking separately at washing your upper body, lower body and hair.
- Managing toilet needs and incontinence – but not taking account of problems getting to the toilet.
- Dressing and undressing – looking separately at dressing your upper body and lower body
- Talking to people – being able to express yourself and to understand what other people say
- Reading things and understanding what you are reading
- Interacting with people face-to-face
- Managing money – dealing with simple purchases and checking your change; and dealing with more complex household budgeting
PIP Mobility Component is assessed by scoring your ability to:
- Plan and follow a journey; without getting lost or experiencing panic, anxiety or distress
- Move around; the two important tests relate to walking 20 metres or 50 metres
It does not matter whether you actually do the activities, or whether you actually have any help to do them.
The assessment is a hypothetical one, looking at what help you would need, to do the activity:
- Most days. Many people think PIP is about your worst days, but this is wrong. You must tell them about how your condition usually affects you.
- Whenever you need to do them – at all points in the day. So if you can do a task in the morning, but need help to do it in the evening, you count as needing help.
- In a reasonable time – no more than twice as long as the task would take without your illness or disability – counting any rest breaks that you need to take while you are doing the task
- Safely – without causing a risk to yourself, or to anyone else.
- Without too much pain, discomfort, dizzy–ness, vertigo, longer-term fatigue needing later periods of recovery.
You score points if you need:
- Aids – By aids, they mean things, that you would not need if you did not have your condition. For example, a stool in the kitchen counts as an aid for cooking, a rail by your toilet would count as an aid, a dosette box or blister pack would count as an aid for managing medication.
- Physical Help from another person. For example, you might need someone to move a heavy pan while cooking, you might need someone to help you with shoes and socks, you might need someone to wash your hair or help you in and out of a shower.
- Prompting, reminding, encouraging or explaining to do the PIP activities. For example, you might need someone to prompt you while cooking because of brain-fog. You might not be able to face getting dressed and need encouragement to do so.
- Someone with you all the time you are doing the activity to keep you safe – For example, you might need someone with you while cooking because of the dangers of dizzyness and heat-sensitivity. You might need someone with you in the shower, because of vertigo and dizzyness.
- Communication support or social support
If you have all this help, and you still can’t do an activity, safely, in a reasonable time, whenever you need to, without too much pain, fatigue, dizzyness and need for recovery, then you score maximum points for that activity.
All of the following statements score PIP Daily Living points:
I can’t do it unless…
I can’t do it unless I use an aid…
I can’t do it unless I have physical help…
I can’t do it unless someone prompts me, or reminds me, or encourages me, or explains things to me…
I can’t do it unless someone is with me all the time I am doing it to keep me safe…
I can do it, but…
I can do it, but it takes me more than twice as long as it used to. To do it in a more reasonable time I would need aids, or physical help, or prompting/reminding/encouraging/explanations…
I can do it, but only at certain times in the day. To do it whenever I reasonably need to, I would need aids, or physical help or prompting/reminding/encouraging/explanations…
I can do it, but it causes a lot of pain, discomfort, dizzyness, vertigo, or other bad effects. To do it without too much pain or other bad effects I would need….
I can do it, but I have to take a long time to recover afterwards. To do it without wiping myself out I would need…
Even if I’ve got help…
Even if I have someone with me all the time I am doing it, I still can’t do it safely…
Even if I have aids, physical help, and prompting/reminding/encouraging/explanations I still can’t do it in a reasonable time…
Even if I have aids, physical help, and prompting/reminding/encouraging/explanations I still can’t do it whenever I need to…
Even if I have aids, physical help, and prompting/reminding/encouraging/explanations I still can’t do without too much pain and bad effects….
Even if I have aids, physical help, and prompting/reminding/encouraging/explanations I still can’t do at all…
Download a word doc of my checklist: Every Possible PIP Question