Whole families on UC, PIP, DLA and carers' allowance for each other?

You have to meet the criteria -
I didn't mean anyone getting PIP has to be suicidal - I meant that simply a bit depressed isn't going to meet the PIP criteria.
Even people who should meet the criteria due to disability may not meet the criteria

PIP is extremely hard to get

On previous threads I had one person suggest that I should just move to a cheaper area to the smallest house I could find and then I probably wouldn't even need benefits at all and another person suggest that I should just get a carer so that I can work and this carer takes my son to all of his appointments.

Some suggestions are wild.

There are hoops to jump through. But the number of people getting PIP has soared, so no not that difficult to get if you know how to complete the form.

I work with people who get benifits daily. A single person on SDP and UC gets up to 1600, I am working with a single mum who gets nearly £2500 and that doesn’t include rent or council tax. She gets every grant going and free dental care. I have a disability and a child with asd. I am not against benifits but don’t think you should be better off than someone working. I would need to pay my rent and council tax off if my £2500 wage

Benefit amounts ramp up if you have a parent on PIP and more than one child on DLA. The benefit cap does not apply then, so you can easily get far more than the median wage.

How many of those are people transferring from DLA? I seem to remember there are still adults on DLA

And once you’re on it you’ll be on it for years as DWP are so overwhelmed that most reviews have been paused.

We have a SEN son and my DH works 10 hour days . Despite his needs, the family is net contributors.

DS1 was born extremely prematurely and has multiple complex disabilities. He is now a young adult. He went to a special school and received DLA and is now in receipt of full PIP. We recently had to go through the mandatory reconsideration process for LCWRA because our phone assessor was a total wally who wouldn’t listen to a word we were saying and made up his own narrative. Strangely enough his uninformed decision was quickly overturned.

Shortly before the assessment took place I happened to mention it on an MN thread. A poster claiming to be an LCWRA assessor took me to task and demanded to know why I would be involved in my son’s assessment and why he and I had ‘decided’ that he couldn’t work. She clearly didn’t understand the role of a legal appointee and had made some extraordinary assumptions about my son.

There seem to be a lot of people out there who think they know that others’ lived experiences are wrong.

Thank you, I am left wing and always seen myself as a socialist but working in social work has actually shocked me the amount people get and are entitled too. There’s also an expectation not to pay for anything. When I have done the financial assessment they have more disposable income than me who works full time and been to uni. I think I get more annoyed as I have a disability so find working really hard but will keep going, I don’t want to bring my kids up thinking that it’s an equal option to working. I know a family with the exact same diagnosis’s and issues as mine and the whole family claim benifits, the mum basically reinforces their difficulties and tells them as teens work will be too hard. It’s became their whole identity. She plays up on the applications what they can’t do, says one son can’t go to school due to travelling and yet he’s out and about with friends on buses and trains, says a daughter can’t open packets due to poor motor skills and yet lots of kids need their parents to open things. Again I’m not against benifits, it’s being exploited now I think and if you can make more doing that than working then their is no incentive to ever work

£1600 doesn't go that far when you've got rent to pay. Being disabled is expensive

I retired last year, but I was a welfare rights officer.

I think it might be worth you reapplying for PIP, but either get specialist help (from CAB or similar organisation), or do loads of research.

"Benefits and Work" do a good guide to filling in the forms, but iirc you have to stump up £20 or so to join. The PIP form appears straightforward, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole raft of regulations and guidance underpinning it. A lot of people fail because nowhere in the DWP paperwork that is sent out does it mention that if you can't do something safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly or within a reasonable time period, it counts as though you can't do it. And anyone applying should google "PIP descriptors and points" to see how the scoring system works.

This is also very informative: Guidance for PIP assessors

Even knowing all this stuff, PIP isn't easy to get. On the team I worked on, around 25-30% of our applications were refused initially. We appealed almost all of those decisions, and had virtually 100% success rate at appeal (one person out of a team of 7 lost an appeal about 6 years ago).

This is why I'm cynical about all these claims of people getting PIP when there's very little wrong with them. If experienced staff who've had loads of training and experience are having claims refused that shouldn't be, I find it hard to believe that so many people without significant functional impairments manage to blag their way into getting PIP.

Good for you
As you will be well aware SEN is a very broad term
Do you work?.

the rent is paid by universal credit and he gets council tax benifits. All medication is free in Scotland, the only extra payed due to disability is taxis. I am disabled myself, so is my sibling and I have autistic children so I am well aware of additional costs

You know for most people the LHA rate doesn't cover their rent? Shelter did research recently and found 1.9% of rents were fully covered

If you're well aware of disability costs you'd know full well how expensive being disabled can be. Scopes own research suggests that the average disability cost per month is over £1000

It goes off needs not diagnoisi
If your disabillty prevents you from caring for yourself
Making a meal
Travelling from A to B indpendently you should put in a claim
If not its unlikely you would be entitled .

Honestly the average disability does not cost that.
Being deaf you have to pay for hearing aid batteries for example. But any aids are usually free.
DH who uses an NHS wheelchair has to pay for taxis, but nowhere near that amount and not entitled to pip.
Mental health issues that mean you rarely go out might require taxis to gp apps and ready meals. Nowhere near the figure you quote.
It's when you employ carers the costs ramp up.

Everyone should google or use chat gpt to look into what families are actually getting before jumping on people who have an opinion about it being too much. There’s no doubt that their are families are struggling, need benifits and can never work but their has also been a culture of relying on it and staying on it as it’s a better income than working. I know people deliberately working 16 hours so then to claim UC for the rest, they have no disability’s at all. There is definitely people playing the system and as I say using asd and adhd as an excuse from the get go not to work instead of trying everything for them to get into the job market. I saying that I work with parents who are trying to do that but there older child will never be able to work and they can find that hard to accept. Again I just do not think you should be better off not working and that is the case for many.

Where's your source that disability doesn't cost that much? A lot of equipment is expensive. We can't just go online and order things from Amazon

A lot of parents, especially mothers, of disabled children get refused PIP because if you're the carer of a disabled child & Social Services aren't involved, how functionally impaired can you be? Even more so if you're also claiming carer's allowance as the carer of an adult.

I wish peoole would stop perputating the myth that its about how you complete the form
There is no magical way about completing the form
In fact its very straight forward
But you need robust evidence to back up your claim.

Yes I am well aware but I am saying people are saying they can’t do things when they can. The families I claiming this are all making meals, go on holidays, can bath themselves. They are saying what they can’t do on a bad day which happens to me too when I’m having a flare. Again my point is I do not think you should have more in benifits than someone not working

They can say what they want without the evidence they wont get very far.

I am the we.
Most people get what they need from the NHS. Ask for a care needs assessment, wheelchair assessment etc. Some smaller aids are not provided such as sock aids and you absolutely can buy them from Amazon.
Specialist wheelchairs to play sport or go off road are expensive. But only a small proportion of disabled people need these.

If the NHS won't give you a wheelchair, walker or home aids, then you have been medically assessed as not needing them.

Why do you think that? No one can see if you can dress or wash or cook. It's easy to exaggerate these things.
You don't understand the process at all.