I made a DLA claim for my DS back in November, he is now 4. I have a confirmed diagnosis of social communication difficulties and we are in the process of ASD diagnosis, but the specialist is useless with him, our other DS who is 14 with mixed-neuro development disorder inc. ASD, ADHD and other things, she's great with him, but rubbish with 4 year old. She just says he's too young and we are looking into things too much, but with DS who is 14 we left it and it took 2 years from age 6-8 to get diagnosis and by this point he was emotionally stunted and severely bullied coz of difficulties etc.
Anyway the claim was rejected within 2 days of them receiving it. I requested a mandatory reconsideration as per our ASD Helping Hands advisor and she wrote the reconsideration letter for me.
I received a phone call from a Decision Maker requesting more info at 8am - my DS has a serious aversion to sleep so I do the night shift with the boys and DH does the days with all 3 kids (have a DD too who is 'normal') so I can sleep - I had only been asleep 3 hours so I was in my deep sleep. He was asking lots of questions about DS and specifically his night needs ie. nappy changes, sleep routines etc. my advisor did the recon letter as per a bad night, so I totally fluffed it up when the Decision Maker was asking how long stuff typically took and how many sleepless nights roughly as I based it on a typical week which is 4-5 bad nights, but the letter stated almost every night and the longest period is 17 poor nights in a row.
I'm very concerned I've messed up and they think I'm lying, my advisor says not to worry as we can go to appeal and the fact I was woken up from a deep sleep and questioned and I specifically made the DM aware of this should help with making things right if the outcome of the recon is no.
I'm just wondering if any of you lovelies out there have had dealings with a DM before as my claim for my 14yo was before recons were mandatory.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated as im very worried I've totally messed up. Oh and the DM put the recon through to the next DM on 20/2/15 so someone is definitely looking at it and I rang on 25/2/15 to get this confirmed.