what about just sending a letter something like:
Dear Sir/Madam
Re: childs name, childs nat ins no. childs date of birth (all underlined)
I am writing to you regarding your recent decision on my daughter ......'s claim for disability living allowance. Your refusal to award her anything I feel is wrong as there are many things she needs extra care for than a child without her disability. ....... is diagnosed with autism and has been diagnosed with this after various lenthly assessments by different professionals looking at all the problems she has and they felt these problems were significantly different from other children of her age and also felt that these dificulties were significant enough to diagnose autism.
My son ....... has problems in understading social situations and understanding what is expected from her and what she needs to do at numerous points during the day, maveraging at about 3 times an hour each time for about 10 minutes depending on the issues that are occuring at the time. ......... has extra support in school due to her social and understanding problems there so that she can learn alongside other children of her age without a disability. Without this extra support ....'s differences would be much more obvious in the school environent and i am under no doubt that she would not be achieving as much as she is at school as this extra care she needs is vital to her attending school as without it she has very little understanding of what is happening and how to do the tasks required. ........ also needs extra help in the home, she has difficulty in areas of self help where other children without her disability do not, without extra care form myself she would not be aware which kind of clothes to wear for the weather, be able to brush her teeth without substantial guidance or bath herself without great guidance and constant supervision by myself. Although ...... sleeps well so does not need any help at night she needs help at various times throughout every day for varying lengths of time sometimes as little as 5 minutes explaining something and reassuring her of what is happening but sometimes when her anxiety levels are high it can take up to an hour reassuring her and calming her, this happens between once and four times every day. ........... has major difficulties with anxiety and emotional problems relating to this, these are far greater than a child would have without her disability at the same age and affect her on a daily basis at numerous times throughout every day. When ..... gets anxious and emotional she finds everything very hard and needs a lot of support to do anything else. Unlike children her age without a disability she needs more than just a few words of encouragement she needs to be given clear guidlines as to what to expect from the next part of the day (ie next period of school, period before lunch at home etc). This guidance needs to be repeated again and again using both verbal and visual cues. ........ uses a visual timetable to enable her to understand what is happening and this reduces some of her anxieties but she is still very unpredictable and can get extremely distressed very often and needs an adult who understands her disability and the methods needed to reassure her and calm her at various interals throughout every day. If someone was not available to intervene ..... would quickly spiral more and more into an anxiety attack and within half an hour she would be inconsolable and unable to carry on the task she was doing without myself or her one to one at schools support and reassurance whcih can take any amount of time though usually at least 30 minutes. If soemthing unexpectedly changes in .....'s daily routine she also has an anxiety attack, as im sure you understand we do our best to minimise these unexpected changes for her however there are so many times when circumstances are out of our control. These are things that a child without her disability would not find at all concerning however ........ due to the way her autism affects her anxiety and understanding finds them extremely distressing. Examples of these small changes which can result in a 30 minutes to an hour long anxiety attack are, roadworks being done on the route to school that she was unaware of, a supply teacher as her class teacher is off sick, non uniform day where noone is wearing what she expects and finds reassuring, a local shop moving shelves the items we buy are on, changes to the school day for things such as sports day, national book day, etc. ......... despite our best efforts to try and make things predictable for her finds these things very stressful and about 10 times a day breaks down in a full anxiety attack which can take 30-60 minutes a time often to reassure her and calm her down. children without her disability do not have these problems. On average in a day i have worked out by doing a diary for the last 4 weeks that ...... needs reassurance and help to understand social situations for approximately 3hrs in total though this can often be more depending on the situations present that day. This along with the additional help with personal care such as dressing and washing etc i feel is what makes her significantly different to children without her difficulty and shows she requires a significant amount more care than other children without her disability of a similar age.
I hope this has clarified some of the points on my initial claim form i feel may have been unclear and that you will now reconsider the decision you made on ..... to refuse my daughters claim for disability living allowance as she does need significant extra care at numerous times during the day every which I feel shows how her disability makes her very different and requiring much more help than maybe i made clear in the claim form dated .....
I ask that you will use the further information in the letter to look at .....'s claim again and i trust that if you need any clarification or further information about any of these problems you will contact me using the contact details above or also on the original claim form. I can also provide you with any further information you feel i may have left out or names of people who can confirm my daughters problems if you need this.
Yours Faithfully
........
thats a rough idea for what i would do, up to you. it might be all muddled and spelt wrong as i currently have ds sat bouncing all over sofa next to me and attacking the keyboard!! hope thats of some help even if the examples are wrong completely as im just guessing and dont know your dd!! feel free to tell me its useless or to shut up!
Jen