One in six PIP claimants have no extra costs linked to their disability

[Allseeingallknowing]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/40693771/pip-claimants-disability-benefit/
So, can money be saved here?

I think this calls trend calls a few things into question

From around 2022, has there suddenly been an increase in disability?

Given there are posters here saying they would be suicidal or their lives would be ruined if they didn’t get pip, what was happening to the same sets of people back in the 70s and 80s? There were periods back then when the cost of living was dire, such as when interest rates and mortgage rates skyrocketed.

I would argue the current trend is unsustainable. We’re looking at massive tax increases on ordinary working people (the argument about taxing the rich doesn’t add up because there are relatively few of them) at the same time as reductions in spending on infrastructure like roads, schools, defence.

I would hypothesise it’s the trend that people worry about, rather than the spend right now. Where does it end? How far will the ordinary taxpayer’s taxes need to rise to pay for this? The fact that the government is committed to continuing with the status quo means the inevitable will happen - taxpayers crushed under an unbelievable burden of tax. The prospect is frightening for the ordinary working mums posting on here. No amount of special pleading will take away their fear of the impending misery of seeing increasingly more wages confiscated when they desperately wanted to spend time with their children anyway.

Won't it? The average cost of being disabled is more than maximum pip. You're going to have some disabled people who have an unexpected expense. What happens there?

Plenty of people do this disabled or not

Agree. This diminishes the efforts of working mums who go out to do a tedious job because it puts food on the table and fits in with childcare arrangements.

My point is life is not fair. Why do we financially compensate some unfairness but not others?

I can only speak personally - the cost wouldn’t make sense.

After school club for our son is £20 per session, because of how specialist it needs to be. Child benefit isn’t £100 a week.

So before you started offering him anything else, you’re operating at a £72.95 loss per week for that one child.

There are 200 kids in his school, and schools like his up and down the country.

Why? If the PIP is to offset additional costs then surely they have additional costs too?

why should they have to cut them themselves whilst others don’t?

I can't remember who was talking about medication being free for children /adults on benefits/adults with certain medical conditions on the nhs and when but there are lots of medicine that isn't covered. Which is fine but it is an extra expense that disabled people have.

Just off the top of my head, 2 of my dc and me take antihistamines regularly. Dc4 has had 26 operations and counting which has required endless amounts of calpol and Nurofen over the years (medical trauma means he won't take the non branded stuff). I take tranexamic acid which I have to buy myself, creams for my eczema. The tranexamic acid is really expensive.

That's just for my family. I'm sure there are many more medications not covered by the nhs.

To try to have a more equitable society, I would have thought. It has to start somewhere, and does evolve.

Plus children like my son who are complex but still in mainstream education.

It’s evolving into resentment

Exactly.

The cost of staffing wraparound care for children like mine, and yours, would be more expensive than child benefit within 2 sessions.

People being resentful of the fact someone has a disability. Maybe people need to stop and think what they says about them!

Totally this

My friend is a carer to her 11-year-old OLD daughter a special needs, but if she works over X number of hours then Loses the carer aspect

Yet she still caring for her every night she gets woken up 3456 times

So, what can be done about that? There will always be people who have a problem, with what they perceive as other people getting things, that they are not able to access. One only has to look at the hoo ha about children having free holiday clubs in the school holiday, due to very low income at home, etc. The envy, or whatever you wish to call it, is very distasteful.

Are you trying to compare not having grandparents to being severely disabled?

I think means testing is a fair discussion but its actually a very significant change. Pip isnt a relief of poverty benefit its a supporting independence benefit and that support is needed however much you or your spouse earns. So it changes the concept to relief of poverty caused by disability.

It also has the same threshold issue you are concerned about (where people just 1 point off dont get any help at all but realistically have the same independence issues) but this time there's an extra threshold is earning. It could really disentivise work or marriage. People do very drastic things to qualify for childcare

It also is a change in the concept of the welfare state itself in many ways. A lot if us higher earners pay in because we know we can access the same systems. Im personally happy paying pension contribution because I will get a pension. Im happy paying towards pip because if me or my partner become disabled we can get support. But the more I have to contribute to things I cant access the more friction there could be.

Also the tax is sort of means testing isnt it. The benefit becomes more like a tax rebate high earners are still paying more tax than pip. At that level they'd still pay about 22k tax a year (if maximum pip was deducted out of thier tax). They won't all get maximum pip, someone on low rare mobility is still going to pay nearly 30k a year tax. Let them join in the system they are paying for.

Yep.

If the whole point is about saving money which is usually the claim on these type of threads then it really isn't going to save money. Especially if the intention was to remove child benefit in order to help fund it and no other benefits.

This 💯. I was discussing this thread with my DH yesterday. DD1’s expenses exceed her PIP and my carer’s allowance, easily. Not all these expenses are ones you would automatically think of. As an example of this, DD1 has meltdowns because of her autism and FASD (Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder), where she throws things and breaks them. Or she accidentally breaks things.

We then have to claim on the household insurance for the accidents in order to be able to afford to repair them. Inevitably the insurance premiums have gone up and there is an excess to pay each time.

And yes, we do make her cover repairs from her pocket money but that doesn't help us obviously as it isn't as if she’s earning her own money!

Maybe you should apply.

My daughter has a rare health condition and we pay a fortune for private appts and various dietary supplements and dieticians, as there are few nhs specialists in this area. We never thought of claiming as we make sacrifices to prioritise her, and claiming benefits isn’t something we ever consider.

But seeing people say they need PIP for online shops etc makes me see that they don’t realise that we as full time workers need online shopping too, as we are too busy to go to supermarkets due to work! I reckon many of us here getting by without benefits could also make a case for PIP…

We’re regularly told on here to take “specialist care” out of DLA.

And then I say - I do. I pay the £20 per session I require out of his DLA, and it is an additional cost of his disability, because that’s not how much wraparound is for children of his age without his level of need.

Then the argument is “well I have to pay £5 per day for my child myself so we’re getting rid of PIP.”

Never quite sure what people want!

I have seen articulate people on here in their 30s/40s with anxiety/personality disorder saying they are on benefits and will never work again. I find that astonishing. They will cost a fortune to the country over a lifetime and don’t seem to want to try and get help and change. It blows my mind.

Me either.

''He should be in specialist provision'' is usually the helpful suggestion I get for my son.

Except that isn't going to happen. So he goes to mainstream with support and actually manages fine but it does mean no wraparound care because they can't meet his needs.

This is true I think. I know a friend has had to remodel her entire driveway to allow access to her own family home, making doorways accessible, a wet room bathroom etc. Her family looked for alternative properties but none existed.

lol any sentence that starts with "I thought I’d ask chatGPT" usually indicates the person themselves has zero expertise in the subject matter and has limited ability to QA the outputs of a piece of internet-bolt on code...

that, due to market interests, was deliberately released into the wild before addressing the fundamental issue that it hallucinates in attempt to interpolate missing information, references completely irrelevant sources with absolute conviction, or often mangles raw input data

have you sense-checked the outputs?

or are you trusting the graph because it looks nice?

and all the above assumes you've not mistakenly fed it bad data...

and the obvious follow up is please provide a link to the official sources of input data used