5 year old refused dla

[elliejjtiny]

My 5 year old has learning difficulties (learning age around 2.5-3 years old), hydrocephalus, cleft lip and palate, glue ear, a squint and hypermobility.

He can walk but he walks like an 18 month old would, kind of staggering along, bumping into everything and falling over. The dinner ladies at school call him Mr wobbly because of how he is on the playground. He has a wheelchair for distances or for when I need to be somewhere at a certain time (rather like a young toddler would use their buggy).

He has eye patches for his squint so he needs constant supervision for 2 hours a day when he wears them to stop him taking them off. He needs fairly constant supervision the rest of the time really too.

I phoned the dwp this morning and the lady on the phone said that his needs are "age appropriate". I'm waiting for the decision maker to call me back but that could take up to 3 working days. I put on the form that he could walk 50-100 metres and now I'm wishing I'd put less as he can physically walk that distance but not without falling over 2 or 3 times and bumping into at least one thing or person.

I am going to go for mandatory reconsideration but I'm wondering what kind of evidence I should be sending. I thought I'd start sorting that out now. The school put an example of a previous reception child's writing at the end of the year in the back of their books to show what they should be doing at the end of the year. DS's writing is way behind that so I could send in photocopies of his writing book. He's also got "ds needed a lot of support in this task" written all over his writing book and his maths book so that could be evidence too.

Could you ask the Senco at the school to write a letter stating everything they do to support your DS. Also if you didn’t do it before send every letter you have from paediatrician and anyone else who supports your son. I also sent a diary where I recorded everything for a week. I had to ask for mandatory reconsideration as we got nothing as well first time, when I did mandatory reconsideration and sent the extra stuff in my dd got awarded middle rate care and low rate mobility. Good luck.

I got turned down on the corking grounds that "Mini-Kallax is a well behaved little girl"

I have so far refrained from writing and asking if I was applying for DLA or a fucking gold star in the behaviour assembly.

Have you seen the cerebra dla guide? If not I would google it and have a read and you’ll get a feel for whether you’ve worded the form correctly - most of the claims that are turned down are due to how the form is filled out and putting too much weight on diagnosis (you actually don’t need a diagnosis to claim dla - we received high rate care before ds had any diagnosis- it’s just about how much care a child needs compared to another child of the same age).

www.cerebra.org.uk/help-and-information/guides-for-parents/dla-guide/

Agree with sending in any paperwork from anyone in any position of authority who has noted or commented on your son’s conditions. When I applied for my DS (6yrs ago), we sent in all diagnostic reports, all physio reports, OT reports, speech and language reports and asked the preschool SENCo to write a few paragraphs on how his difficulties affected him at pre-school. The Cerebra guide linked above was excellent and really helped me focus on how to frame my application. At the end of every point I made detailing his disabilities, I contrasted how he differed to a typically developing child of the same age.

When I posted about it on here at the time, I was advised to think about how his disabilities affected him if he was having a really bad day and to write the form from that point of view. It is unpleasant, but it is one instance in which you have to really focus on all the negatives of what your child can’t do instead of the things they can.

Thankyou. I used the cerebra guide, it's really good. I spoke to the decision maker and he said that ds was turned down because the school said he likes helping, is polite and doesn't have an ehcp. I listed all the things that ds struggles with and he just said that was all normal for a 5 year old. I hate it when people do this. I'd rather they just say sorry but we can't afford to give dla, speech therapy or whatever to anyone who isn't very severely disabled instead of telling me that my ds doesn't need any help because he doesn't have a problem. Sometimes I feel like I'm in some kind of parallel universe where it's obvious my child is disabled but nobody else seems to have noticed.

Turned down because was turned down because the school said he likes helping, is polite and doesn't have an ehcp

Schools really need to wise up. They are so tuned in to reporting the best to parents that they forget the DWP need to know the everyday truth.

He's also got "ds needed a lot of support in this task" written all over his writing book and his maths book so that could be evidence too.
Definitely this.
Could you ask his teacher to tell you how much support he needs compared to other kids in class.
Then ask her to write it up with no frills, just the facts of what he struggles with, physically as well as classwork, what they have to do to help.

Apply for ECHP.

Join me in the corner of parents of awesome children: official as the DLA bods say so!

Definitely apply for the ehcp yourself. It sounds like he needs one. I would then (once you have it agreed in principle) reapply for dla. It might make the difference between not getting it and getting it (it shouldn’t but that seems to be coming up more and more now).