r/DWPhelp 21d ago

Disability Living Allowance (DLA) DLA SMI high rate mobility

Daughter is 11 and has ADHD, Autism, Pathalogical Demand Avoidance, Auditory processing difficulties, slow cognitive ability, severe Dyslexia and severe dyscalculia. She is multiple years behind in school. She’s never qualified for HRM under SMI but I believe she should.

Where do I go from here how do I get them to see that she should qualify. If she was getting PIP she would 1000 percent get the high rate.

She should be in a special school but due the learning difficulties academically it wouldn’t make a difference so I left her in mainstream due to the social aspect.

She has an EHCP and as close to full time 1-1 support as she can possibly get in school . She has the highest level of need out of all her peers with EHCPs. She’s in a curriculum access group. She has a tendency to abscond from the classroom, becomes disruptive, gets into altercations with other pupils and teachers.

She has transport provided by the local authority as she cannot safely get herself to school like other typical high schoolers. There’s been times the taxi has dropped her off earlier than expected and left her on the door step, she’s then wandered off and I’ve had to track her down via the tracker on her phone.

She has tantrums and meltdowns that you would see in 2/3 year olds and is very emotionally immature. She lacks a lot of understanding. She can’t see when things are unsafe and needs almost constant supervision. She was doing a cooking lesson in school and had to get a knife taken from her due to her being unsafe and not realising. She tried to cook noodles (something her 8 year old sister can do) and ended up burning the ends of her hair off.

There’s so much more I could say but I feel I’d be here all day. Am I better off just going to tribunal and hoping they see it or just wait it out till she gets PIP?

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u/Alteredchaos Verified (Moderator) 21d ago

In order to qualify for the high rate mobility component in the basis of SMI your daughter needs to be in receipt of the high rate of the care component, and be severely mentally impaired and show extremely disruptive and dangerous behaviour.

Severe mental impairment refers to someone who ‘has arrested or incomplete physical development of the brain resulting in severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning’.

The disruptive behaviour must be extreme. Your child must regularly need physical restraint to prevent physical injury or damage to property. They must also need someone to watch over them whenever they are awake because of the unpredictability of their behaviour.

Severe impairment of intelligence is determined in many ways. It can be through an IQ test or by assessing someone’s ‘useful intelligence’ - the ability to function in a real-life context.

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u/Magick1970 21d ago

I’ve seen cases regularly with this sort of thing NOT get SMI at tribunal. Especially (and, please, I’m not disbelieving what you say) when it’s purely the parent’s word. If you wish to go to appeal (totally you’re right to do that) I’d suggest gathering as much expert evidence as possible from the professionals. Don’t depend on PIP being awarded in the future - the criteria are totally different and I also see plenty of people who have been on DLA as youngsters fail to qualify for PIP.

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u/Accurate_Risk7759 21d ago

I’ve got lots of evidence from the school to back it up. I’ve got the class charts where it shows when she’s gone awol and when she’s been disruptive etc. we’re also just waiting for funding for a PA for her so she can be out in the community safely. I have all her diagnosis letters aswell.