Blue badge for DS with ASD - advice please

[adelinehillman]

I have applied for a Blue Badge for my DS who has ASD and hypermobility. I have applied previously when we only had the hypermobility diagnosis, but were declined. Now, with the ASD diagnosis I thought I would try again, however the council are requesting we go in for a walking assessment. Problem is, if they ask my DS to walk 30 feet, he'll walk 30 feet, however if you ask him to walk 30 feet in a crowded shopping centre, have to navigate people, noises etc. plus going up/down stairs with people around it?s a really different story. They have said that they don't recognise ASD or hypermobility as a disability.

Has anyone got any advice on Blue Badges. I feel that having a Blue Badge will improve my DS' life in that we can get out to new and different places, hopefully increasing his confidence too knowing that the safety of the car isn't too far away. Plus it will help my back as carrying him (he's a heavy 5 year old) back to car when he can't/won't walk is killing me! Also he has run out into the road on numerous occasions, and I am sometimes scared to go to various places in the event of a horrid accident.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

What zzzzz said!

Would you care to say what county you are in? Perhaps there will be posters with specific experience there who can help you out?

We had this too. Except they said it was not a physical disability not that it was not a disability at all!

Most LAs will apply the test for HRM for DLA
However you do not have to get HRM after all there is no obligation to apply for DLA at all and not getting HRM should not prevent you getting a blue badge
The walking test is part of the HRM test.
We knew getting HRM would be tricky so did not bother appealing that but still got a blue badge

First of all you have to say autism is a disability and has a physical cause (arrested development of the brain) see here. Mental conditions are not covered only physical.

Then you have to demonstrate your DS is virtually unable to walk - I referred them to the DLA Decision Makers Guide which has a specific eg for a person with autism see para 61299

Contact a Family have a guide to HRM if you can satisfy this then you should get a blue badge

I was not sure if DS would be eligible or not and was happy to do the walking test but from our house (where he has huge rituals which prevented walking except in one direction) however when I wrote back and pointed out all their errors eg that autism is a disability recognised for HRM they obviously were so embarrassed they dropped the test and just issued the badge to get rid of me

'Unable to walk or virtually unable to walk'
means 50 yards outside, on the flat, at a reasonable pace, without having to stop and without severe danger /discomfort (either immediate or delayed). He sounds like he meets this.

I wonder if listing the hypermobility components individually would help (eg flat feet/ unstable ankle/ knee / hip joints, severely impaired balance, falls, limited proprioception, poor co-ordination etc etc). And doing the same with the autism (eg arrested development of te brain causing impairments of sensory processing, no sense of danger, lack of awareness of pain and fatigue until total collapse, limited communication, lack of environmental and social understanding, inflexibility of mind, etc etc).

Autism and hypermobility might be a bit too broad as descriptions, perhaps they need more detail for them to really understand your ds's particular issues.

Parking on a busy road outside the civic centre, because no blue badge and full car park, then sending someone in (to get the council person to come out) worked for a 'friend of a friend of a friend'....

Mind you, she also declined to help extract the flapping child from the car, and asked them to sign that they took full responsibility for doing the walking test next to such a dangerous road. Badge came in 6 days

Crikey, this thread is scaring me. Never heard of such a thing as a walking test!! Is this new?

Not that I think ds isn't entitled to his blue badge but a one-off walking test might not necessarily tell the whole story.

Thanks guys. I live in Surrey (Surrey Heath). I have given more detail in the application as to why I feel DS needs a Blue Badge. I'll look through the links and hope to get somewher. We have applied for DLA but haven't had a response as yet, it's all a bit new to me and I didn't realise that we would have to justify everything, I have the letter of diagnosis, getting that was hard enough!