Disabled facilities grant - experiences please - extra bedroom

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Hello

has anyone recently been approved for a disabled facilities grant to help with a loft conversion?

We live in a 3 bed house and have 3 children

• son aged 5 - diagnosed with ASD is non verbal and attends specialist school
• son aged 6 - NT
• daughter aged 9 - NT

Our son with ASD and his brother were sharing but he was a danger to himself and was hurting his brother so we’ve had to move him into his own bedroom and will need to be on his own long term but our other two can’t share much longer. They’re winding eachother up something chronic and our daughter needs her privacy.

We’ve been waiting for our referral to occupational health by our social worker for over 6 months with no end in sight - have been told the waiting list could be another year.

We own our house and weve been looking into a loft extension but with interest rates being so high the cost is eye watering and we can’t afford to move.

A friend has advised me to use a private occupational therapy assessment and apply to the council for a disabled facilities grant to pay towards the loft extension.

i assumed we had no chance but have heard that someone else at his specialist school was granted money for an additional bathroom for her disabled child.

Has anyone got any experience of this?

Thank you x

I applied just before covid, it's lots of hoops to jump through. Mine was for me (needed downstairs bedroom/wet room).
They sent an ot, a council assessor and some technical expert. They basically look for the cheapest way to sort your issue.
So if for example they can divide a bedroom they may do that. Or tell you to convert a dining room into a bedroom they will. I had to also proove my eldest couldn't share a room with others (had to get medical team to write letters) even though any option would not include dc1 sharing a room.
Another issue may be that they say your youngest two are young enough to share (they said that about my youngest two who were b/g and 10). So before applying may be worth asking a few questions.
If you can get it it's useful but not easy to get. Good luck.

@Nomoreitsnothappening thanks for such a quick reply.

Yes this is what I thought - my daughter is 9 so assume they’ll say she can share with her 6 year old brother. Their bedroom is a decent size so they may also say it could be divided even though this would leave them both with a very small/bordering tiny space each.

A loft conversion is possible, but only when it is the cheapest possible option.

It’s not a quick process. We have had previous DFG work but are awaiting another DFG grant. It has been ongoing for over a year and work hasn’t started yet.

At the moment, they are likely to say DD and DS1 can share, but it is worth beginning the process.

Despite LAs trying to use it as a way out, unless there is other dining space, it is not acceptable for LAs to require the dining room be converted into a bedroom (or bathroom). See this government guidance - “It is also important that the assessment considers the need for the disabled child to be able to participate in all aspects of family life, for example, in ensuring that dining space is available to enable all members of the family to eat together.”

Thanks so much for replying.

We have an open plan downstairs so it would be quite difficult to turn our dining space into a bedroom although I suppose it could be done to leave us with a very small dining area in the kitchen.

Im very tempted to use a private OT - I had a very nice lady over the phone from the council tell me that if successful, the local authority would have to refund the cost of the private assessment as part of an appeal process.

She told me that I hadn’t heard it from her but that other people had used private assessments and then received the full grant.

Also we could possibly fund the remainder of the loft conversion if we received part of it via the grant.

We just can’t afford all the repayments but could pay for some of it by using some of the DLA. interest rates are just too high currently as they are.

Don’t rely on receiving any money back. It isn’t guaranteed.

For children, it is sometimes possible to get top up funding where the DFG doesn’t cover all the cost.