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Disability Living Allowance
(Care & Mobility Components) Updated 31/03/08 Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a benefit for adults and children with disabilities. It is for people who need help looking after themselves and those who find it difficult to walk or get around. You don't need to have someone looking after you to qualify. DLA is tax free, not means tested and you don't need to have paid any National Insurance contributions. It is paid on top of any earnings or other income you may have. It is almost always paid in full on top of social security benefits or tax credits. DLA is divided into two parts:
You can be paid either the care component or the mobility component on its own, or both components at the same time. You can qualify for DLA whether or not you actually have someone helping you. What matters is the effects of your disability and the help you need, not whether you already get that help. Although DLA can be paid indefinitely, there is an upper age limit for making your first claim. You can only get DLA if you claim before your 65th birthday. Otherwise you claim attendance allowance (AA). DO YOU QUALIFY FOR DLA? To qualify for DLA you must pass a series of non-disability tests and also satisfy at least one of the disability tests. Most of the non-disability tests have exceptions to the standard rules, so off-the-cuff advice may not always be correct. To qualify for DLA, you must:
RATES OF DLA - 2008/09 You can get one of the three rates of care component and one of the two rates of mobility component. You'll always get the highest rate to which you are entitled. Each person in your family who qualifies for DLA may claim it. MOBILITY COMPONENT AMOUNT PER WEEK CARE COMPONENT AMOUNT PER WEEK EARNINGS DLA is not affected by earnings. It is payable whether you are in or out of work, and no matter how much you earn. However, starting work may suggest your care needs or mobility problems have lessened, or you have found a simple way to cut back on the help you need from another person. Your DLA can be superseded because of this, but not just because you have started work. If your care needs or mobility problems are unchanged, you should have little to worry about. You may even have more care needs to enable you to do your job. OTHER BENEFITS OR HELP DLA is usually payable in full on top of any other social security benefit or tax credit. The only exceptions are outlined below.
IF YOU GO INTO HOSPITAL Generally, payment of both the care component and the mobility component stops after you've been in hospital for 28 days for adults, or 84 days for children under 16. Payment of benefit starts again from the first benefit pay day (usually a Wednesday) after you leave hospital. If you leave hospital temporarily and expect to return within 28 days, you can be paid your DLA for each day out of hospital. The mobility component can continue to be paid in hospital while you have a Motability agreement in force. Long-stay patients in hospital since before 31/07/95 may be able to keep the mobility component, cut to the lower rate. If you first claim DLA when you are already in hospital, you cannot be paid until you leave. But you can then be paid for the full 28 (or 84) days if you return to hospital, even if you do so within 28 days. THE CARE COMPONENT THE DISABILITY TESTS To qualify for DLA care component your care needs must ultimately stem from disability - both physical and mental disabilities may help you qualify. You must need care, supervision or watching over from another person because of your disabilities. You must be 'so severely disabled physically or mentally that ... you require [from another person]': During the day
At night
Part-time day care
Cooking test
HIGHEST RATE CARE COMPONENT You'll pass the disability test for the £67.00 highest rate if you satisfy:
Basically, your care or supervision needs are spread throughout both the day and the night. MIDDLE RATE CARE COMPONENT You'll pass the disability test for the £44.85 middle rate if you satisfy:
Basically, your care or supervision needs are spread throughout just the day or just the night. LOWEST RATE CARE COMPONENT You'll pass the disability test for the £17.75 lowest rate if you satisfy either (or both) the part-time day care or cooking tests. There is an upper age limit for this rate: you must be under 65 when you first start to satisfy either of the lowest rate disability tests. There is also a lower age limit: if you are under 16 you cannot use the cooking test, but you can use the part-time day care test. WHAT IS THE 'COOKING TEST'? This is the disability test for the lowest rate care component. You must be aged 16 or over to qualify for the lowest rate on this basis. The upper age limit for starting to qualify for the first time is the day before your 65th birthday. But if you claim before your 65th birthday, the lowest rate can be maintained and renewed. The cooking test is intended to be a hypothetical or abstract test. It is intended to gauge the level of disability rather than examine your ability to cook or otherwise. The test looks at whether you can carry out all the activities necessary to prepare a cooked main meal without help from another person. The cooking test covers people whose disabilities mean they cannot cook at all, even if they had help. It also applies to people who don't normally cook, and to those who do cook but cannot prepare the type of cooked main meal at issue or who need some help to carry out the tasks they are capable of. The process of preparing a cooked main meal includes:
The law says you already have the ingredients for the main meal, so it's debatable whether or not preparation also includes getting them from their usual storage places;
WHAT IS 'ATTENTION'? This means active help from another person to do the personal things you cannot do for yourself. It does not matter whether you actually get the help; what counts is the help you need. It must also be help that would need to be given in your presence, not, for example, over the telephone. HELP WITH 'BODILY FUNCTIONS' These are personal things such as breathing, hearing, seeing, eating, drinking, walking, sitting, sleeping, getting in or out of bed, dressing and undressing, going to the toilet, getting in or out of the bath, washing, shaving, communicating, speech practice, help with medication or treatment, etc. Anything to do with your body and how it works can count. Indirect or ancillary attention counts but is often forgotten. Think about the beginnings and ends of particular activities. Where there are other tasks involved during the course of attending to a bodily function, these can count if they are done on the spot. For example, if you need help to change bedding because of incontinence, then rinsing out the bedclothes if it is done straight away also counts, as can soothing you back to sleep. If you need help with eating, then cleaning up spills also counts. If there is some part of an activity you need help with (and you could not carry on without it) that also counts. For example, you may be able to dress yourself, but you cannot get your clothes, or you need to be prompted to dress. It is irrelevant that you can manage most of the activity by yourself. If it takes you a long time to do something, eg getting dressed, you may reasonably require help even though you persevere and eventually manage by yourself. FREQUENT ATTENTION To pass the 'frequent attention throughout the day in connection with [your] bodily functions' test you have to show that during the daytime you need this help frequently and throughout the day - during the middle of the day, as well as in the morning and evening. The fact you can manage most of your bodily functions without help does not mean you fail this test; it depends on the pattern of your accepted care needs. 'Frequent' means 'several times - not once or twice', and the pattern of help must be such that, looking at all the facts about your accepted care needs as a whole, it is true to say you need 'frequent attention throughout the day'. It is difficult to give a clear dividing line between passing the test and not. The best advice is to give as full a picture of your care needs as you can. Describe the help you need, why you need it, and when it is provided. Are your care needs spread throughout the day, or in 2 or 3 parts of the day? Is the care provided when you need it or when your carer is available? Would it be better for you if help was provided at other times or for longer? If your care needs vary because your condition fluctuates over time, give an idea of the pattern of those needs over, say, a month or whatever period of time accurately reflects your circumstances. The decision maker must then focus on what you need and the pattern of those needs, rather than the length of time it takes to meet your needs and the gaps between the attention. DURING THE NIGHT During the night the help must either be 'prolonged' (at least 20 minutes) or 'repeated' (needed 2 times or more). There is no fixed time for the start of the night. It depends on when your household closes down for the night. 'Night' will normally start from the time your carer goes to bed (or midnight if your carer is up until the early hours and would go to bed earlier if they did not have to help you). However, unusual or extreme household arrangements cannot override the simple meaning of the words 'day' and 'night' - i.e. you could not arrange your sleep habits to 'make (your) night light and the dark (your) day'. If your carer would go to bed at the same time as their partner were it not for the need to stay up and help you, night could start at the time their partner goes to bed. In the morning, if your carer has to get up early to look after you, it should still count as night care until the rest of the household gets up. What is 'Continual Supervision'? Supervision is more or less what it says: someone around to prevent any accidents either to yourself, or other people. The words used are 'continual supervision'. This means frequent or regular, but not non-stop. You can apply even if you don't need supervision every single minute. The supervision doesn't have to prevent the danger completely, but it must be needed 'in order to effect a real reduction in the risk of harm to the claimant' The supervision must be 'reasonably required', rather than medically required. For example, you may be mentally alert and know what you should not do without someone on hand to help. Medically speaking, you could supervise yourself. But the question is whether or not you reasonably require supervision from someone else. What is 'Watching Over'? 'Watching over' has its ordinary English language meaning: so it includes needing to have someone else being awake and listening, as well as getting up and checking how you are. Remember the care component is based on the help or supervision you reasonably need from another person, not the help or supervision you actually get. Your care needs must stem from physical or mental disablement, but it need not be medically essential to have that help or supervision. Rather you should show that, given all the circumstances, the help is reasonably required. Nor do you have to need that level of help every night in the week. It depends on the normal pattern of your needs - 3 or 4 nights a week may be sufficient, perhaps less if the dangers would be very grave. RENAL DIALYSIS Special rules for some kidney patients undergoing renal dialysis help them qualify for the middle rate of care component. Depending on when and where you dialyse, you'll be treated as satisfying the disability tests for the day or for the night. You must show that:
HOSPITAL If you are dialysing as an outpatient and getting help from hospital staff, you won't automatically satisfy the disability tests, but it does help you pass both qualifying periods for DLA even if it is only for a short period. THE MOBILITY COMPONENT. THE DISABILITY TESTS Higher rate To qualify for the £46.75 higher rate mobility component you must be aged 3 or over. For tests 1, 2 or 3, you must be 'suffering from physical disablement'. But if it is accepted that your severe learning disabilities have a physical cause, you may also qualify. Your 'physical condition as a whole' must be such that:
Lower rate To qualify for the £17.75 lower rate mobility component you must be aged 5 or over. It doesn't matter that you are able to walk but you must be 'so severely disabled physically or mentally that, disregarding any ability [you] may have to use routes which are familiar to [you] on [your] own, [you] cannot take advantage of the faculty out of doors without guidance or supervision from another person most of the time'. UNABLE TO WALK Being 'unable to walk' means just that: you cannot take a step by putting one foot in front of the other. If you have one artificial leg, your walking ability is considered when using it. You are unlikely to count as being unable to walk but you may well qualify on the basis that you are virtually unable to walk. EFFECTS OF EXERTION For the third disability test for the higher rate it is the exertion needed to walk that must cause the serious problem. How far you can actually walk were you to do so is not relevant. The point is that medically you should not walk very far because of the effect of the effort of walking on your life or health. People with serious lung, chest or heart conditions may qualify in this way; in one case, a man with diabetic ulcers on his feet qualified. The 'danger' or 'serious' deterioration does not have to be immediate, nor does any deterioration have to be likely to last for 6 months. If you can only recover from the deterioration in your health by some kind of medical intervention (e.g. oxygen, drugs) you should explain this on the DLA claim form. Danger from other causes besides the effort needed to walk (e.g. being run over) cannot be taken into account. ARTIFICIAL AIDS AND MEDICAL TREATMENT You will automatically qualify under the 4th disability test if you have no legs or feet, regardless of your ability to manage with prostheses. However, the first 3 disability tests for the higher rate do take into account your walking abilities when using suitable artificial aids such as a walking stick or built up shoe, or a prosthesis. If there is an artificial aid or prosthesis which is 'suitable in [your] case', and you wouldn't be unable or virtually unable to walk if you used it, you'll fail the test. If you use crutches and can only swing through them, rather than use them to walk with each leg able to bear your weight, then you are unable to walk. A guide dog does not count as an artificial aid, nor do painkillers. What counts is your walking ability under any painkillers or other medication that you normally take if it is reasonable to expect you to take it. For example, it may not be reasonable to expect you to carry a bulky nebuliser even though it helps when you get breathless. If you have refused treatment which might have improved your condition, that cannot be held against you: it is your ability to walk as you are that counts. Terminal illness Although you are treated as passing the qualifying period for mobility component, you must actually pass one of the disability tests to be paid mobility component from the time you claim it. SEVERE MENTAL IMPAIRMENT This way of qualifying for the higher rate mobility component is aimed at people with severe learning disabilities. If you don't pass this test, you may pass the virtual inability to walk test. If you fail both tests, you will probably pass the disability test for the lower rate. To be entitled to higher rate mobility component on the basis of severe mental impairment, you must pass the following tests:
Lower Rate of Mobility The lower rate is aimed at people who can walk but cannot generally make use of the ability to do so outside unless accompanied by someone to guide or supervise them. People who are visually impaired or have learning difficulties or mental health problems such as agoraphobia are most likely to qualify. You may qualify if you are deaf and cannot understand spoken or written words sufficiently to seek or follow directions alone. You might also qualify if you have falls, fits or attacks and need someone with you to deal with the consequences. Your mobility problems must be due to physical or mental disability. If fear or anxiety prevents you from walking on unfamiliar routes, it must be a symptom of a mental disability. If your anxiety is connected to your physical condition, but could nevertheless be described as a symptom of mental disability, you may still be able to qualify. For example, a deaf person needing the reassurance of a companion to overcome anxiety about being on unfamiliar routes may qualify if their anxiety is classed as a mental disability. |
