Disabled facilities grant help - loft conversion?

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Hello

does anyone have experience of accessing the disabled facilities grant for their child.

We live in a 2 bedroom house and have 2 boys aged 4 and 5.

Our 5 year old has SEN and attends a specialist school and is non verbal with lots of behavioural difficulties.

The boys have shared a room but this has now become untenable. We’ve had to move the 4 year old in with us as his brother was hurting him and waking him up at all hours.

This has all been so stressful for our family and none of us is getting much sleep.

Our downstairs is open plan so we can’t convert the dining room to a bedroom or something.

We own our house and have looked into moving and simply can’t afford it as I’ve had to give up my job as I couldn’t make it work around looking after my child with SEN as his school has no wraparound care.

Would the disabled facilities grant help us with a loft conversion? Our social worker has referred us to occupational therapy for an assessment but I don’t understand how all this works.

Thank you

Loft conversations are possible, but they are only generally done when there isn’t another option. How big are the bedrooms? Could one be split? How big is downstairs? If it is suitable, they might consider putting up walls downstairs. Sometimes extensions are considered before loft conversions too. It depends on individual needs and the property.

We have had DFGs. Currently waiting for building work to start on another. It isn’t a quick process.

Thanks for responding.

i suppose they could put a wall into a bedroom but it would make it unreasonably small.

And in theory they could put a wall downstairs but again would make the downstairs very boxy and detrimental to family life. Our son also likes to run around downstairs which he wouldn’t be able to do with walls up in the living space.

When you say “not quick” do you mean years?

Many wait over a year. Some wait years from start to finish. In part it depends on how straightforward the case is.

This time we have been waiting around 1.5yrs.

It is worth reading this so you know what is possible.

Yes I was expecting at least a year wait.

Thank you - I have read that page before.

was hoping people with experience of successfully using the grant could say what they got and how long they waited.

I don’t know anyone in real life who’s had one except for someone at my son’s specialist school who had a wet room put in although that was relatively quick. I assume that wasn’t the norm though

The one we are in the middle of now and have been waiting 1.5yrs so far is for a through floor lift (and associated work to make that possible), adapting the en-suite to make it an accessible bathroom for DS1 (this includes moving the rise and fall bath in the main bathroom to the en-suite, adding a wash and dry toilet and changing table and things like tiling and flooring, changing the lighting in bathroom to spotlights, widening the doorway), adding more plug sockets in DS1’s bedroom, and putting in a hoist from bedroom to his new bathroom (hoist funding is slightly different but we have funding for a single track hoist and are topping up to H-frame hoist).

We have previously had two others. One several years ago, which took over 2 years from start to finish to fit a rise and fall bath, wash and dry toilet and changing table. It also included things like locks and lighting, some work to the driveway to ensure DS1 is safe when we put him in/out of the car, and improving access to the front house. The first one was for a different child in a different house and many, many years ago. It took a few months for a stair lift and a few other bits.