Ask the Experts

How will new PIPs affect retiring DLA recipients?

Q I’m female, and due to retire naturally in September, 2011. I’ll then be 60 years and nine months. I receive DLA middle care and high mobility components and I understand that the DLA reform will require medicals for “working age” people (i.e. up to 64 years of age) from 2013-14. Since I’ll be 63-64 by then but not work­ing, how will I be affected by this and will I have to have a medical?
Name supplied

Q In 1978, my wife had to have part of a vertebra removed because of a cauda equina lesion. Now classed as a “walker”, she receives the DLA at both higher levels. She was 61 in January and I’m worried that as a result of the introduction of PIPs (Personal Independence Payments), she may have to be reassessed in 2013-14 and lose all or part of the benefit. Please update me on the Government’s response to submissions under the recent consult­ation and how they may change the assessments.
Name supplied

Ken Butler of Disability Alliance replies: The DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) has recently published several documents relating to the Government’s plan to replace DLA for working-age people (16-64 years of age) with the PIP from 2013. These include draft regulations as well as draft PIP assessment criteria. All these documents can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/67a88qp.

The PIP will have two components: a daily living component and a mobility component. Each of the compon­ents will also have two rates: a standard rate and an enhanced rate.

This means that the current low rate care DLA payment (which 652,000 people receive) is not being replaced in the PIP system. Claimants will have to complete an initial questionnaire, normally followed by a face-to-face assessment. It’s not yet certain whether these assessments will be undertaken by Atos Healthcare, as the Work Capability Assessments are.

In order to qualify for PIP, a person will need to score a certain number of points in relation to specified daily living and mobility descriptor activities. A DWP decision-maker will then consider all the evidence, including any submitted by the claimant, before making a decision as to how many points should be awarded.

All PIP awards will be for a fixed period, excluding exceptional circumstances where ongoing awards may be made based on the individual’s needs and the likelihood of their health condition changing.

However, for all awards, there will still be an in-built review process to ensure they remain accurate.

Between now and August, the Government is to carry out consultations with disabled people and their organisations about its draft proposals, as well as inviting volunteers to test the assessment criteria. A second draft of the assessment criteria will then be published in October to take account of responses and test results. Disability Alliance (DA) hopes to trial the assessment with our Disability Benefits Consortium partners later in 2011 to see how different disabled people are affected.

The Government suggests that it doesn’t yet have firm views on the point scores that should be associated with each proposed daily living or mobility descriptor, or on the thresholds that should determine entitlement to the different rates of PIP.

Nonetheless, it has a pre-determined target of cutting DLA expenditure by 20 per cent by 2015-16 – an estimated total loss to working age disabled people of £2.17 billion – and this remains a concern.

It is therefore difficult to see how any final PIP assessment will in reality have been designed solely “to enable a more accurate, objective, consistent and transparent consideration of individuals”.

In terms of the age group affected by PIP, the DWP confirms that this will be people of working age, defined as being 16 to 64. As well as new claimants of this age group needing to claim PIP from 2013, existing DLA claimants will also start to be reassessed for PIP from that time.

Those in receipt of PIP will continue to be entitled beyond the age of 65, as long as they continue to satisfy the eligibility criteria – although we are hoping that this issue will be explicit in the legislation and not hidden in the regulations that govern it.   

However, the Government says it will use the experience of reassessing working-age people to inform any future decisions about the treatment of existing DLA recipients who are aged 65 and above.

It’s impossible to be more definitive than this. I can however urge all disabled people and carers to read the DWP draft proposals and offer their opinions to the Department by emailing PIP.assessment@dwp.gsi.gov.uk or writing to: DLA Reform (Assessment Development),Department for Work and Pensions, 2nd Floor, Area B, Caxton House, Tothill Street London SW1H 9NA.

Disability Alliance will also be consulting on the assessment plans.

Please visit disabilityalliance.org to keep up to date.

What your brother needs is a Disabled Facilities Grant

Q My brother, now 42, had a car accident that left him severely brain injured, and has been in a nursing home for the last 10 years. He’s healthy but can’t communicate. We get him out and about as a family four days a week, and my mother, now 80, visits him the other days. He shows us he wants to come home and says “home” and “go home” regularly. Since Christmas 2010, we have been working with the Occupational Therapy (OT) and council housing teams to get him home. Their view is that our house is too small, with not enough room around where his bed would be for carers to move safely, and no bathing facility. Can you tell me what the legal requirement around the bed is (if any) and whether we have to provide a bathing facility if my brother could be taken back to the care home once or twice a week for a bath.
Linda Clarke by email

Kate Sheehan replies: We all have the right to choose where we wish to live, within the limits of our own personal financial resources.

If your brother is indicating that he wants to return home, then he has the right to apply for a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) to help in adapting his home physically, to enable him to live indepen­dently with an assessed care package.

The important thing to remember is that the grant is means tested and has a limit of £30,000, although social services do have a statutory duty to look at providing top-up funding if the work is within their assessed Fair Access to Care Services’ criteria.

The DFG has various sections to it but there are four key sections in your brother’s case.

1. “Facilitating access by the disabled occupant to, or providing for the disabled occupant, a room used or usable for sleeping.” This clearly states that funding could be secured to extend the existing bedroom to accommodate the need for PA support, as the room will not be usable unless your brother can be transferred into the bed.

2. “Facilitating access by the disabled occupant to, or providing for the disabled occupant, a room in which there is a wash hand basin, or facilitating the use by the disabled occupant of such a facility.”

3. “Facilitating access by the disabled occupant to, or providing for the disabled occupant, a room in which there is a bath or shower (or both), or facilitating the use by the disabled occupant of such a facility.

4. Facilitating access by the disabled occupant to, or providing for the disabled occupant, a room in which there is a lavatory, or facilitating the use by the disabled occupant of such a facility.”

These sections can be merged together to provide a bathroom with bath and/or shower to meet your brother’s needs, and this could include (without being limited to) a wash-and-dry toilet, height-adjustable sink, hi-low bath or wet floor shower area.

If your brother had any legal settlement from his accident, there may be cash that could be used to fund this essential work.

I recommend you speak to the occupational therapists involved in your brother’s case to see if they could refer you for a Disabled Facilities Grant.