The aids and appliances consultation is, being a tad cynical here, designed to allow the DWP to cut the PIP bill a little. You see when they did away with DLA and replaced it with PIP, they intended to save some money. But theyāve not saved enough. So they looked at the awards that are being granted and thought hmmmm thereās a whole bunch of people who only qualify for the care element by amassing 8 or 12 points (8 for standard rate and 12 for enhanced rate) simply by scoring 2 points within 4 or 6 categories each time because they use mobility aids or appliances to help them. For example,
Section one is all about preparing food. You have one score, ie the highest one that applies to you
If you need no assistance you score 0 points
if you use an aid or appliance score 2 points
If you can use a microwave score 2 points
If you need prompting score 2 points
If you need assistance score 4 points
if you cannot prepare food score 8 points
Then there are a whole load of other sections, each is scored in a similar way. The problem as the DWP see it is that a lot of people score 2 points in each section because they use aids to help them with each activity (eating, washing, dressing etc). The way the DWP see it is that a lot of disability aids are either one time only purchases or are very low cost. For example, with the preparing food one, you might use a perching stool, non slip mats or boards, kettle tipper etc etc. So if you use aids but have no actual physical people caring for you, your disability expenses are a lot lower than a person who has to have help from carers. Yet you can accumulate enough points to qualify for the enhanced rate of PIP just like someone who has to have carers.
So they came up with a load of options for consideration. These included:
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leave it as it is now
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make it so that someone who uses aids and appliances only cannot qualify for the care component at all
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cut the points from 2 to 1 for those who need aids and appliances only
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make it a one off payment for people who need aids and appliances only
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set a different, lower rate for care component for people who use aids and appliances only
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to change the definition of what counts as a mobility aid for the purposes of PIP
So, we are now past the point of being able to comment on this consultation document. The biggest problem as I saw it was the huge complexity of the document. There was duplication of wording. There were a number of things that the DWP were stating as facts that were not defined clearly and therefore had not in fact proven. The questions that were being asked were not necessarily answerable. Therefore, it was too large a job for someone like me to do. I tried but it was something that required hours and hours of work and whilst I have the kind of background to be able to understand it, I also suffer fatigue and have a certain amount of cognitive difficulty. I therefore volunteered to be a respondent for the MSS campaign team, just as many other people did.
As I am cynical and have seen what the DWP are capable of doing, I suspect that the āconsultationā will result in them making changes to the way PIP is assessed for people who use aids and appliances to help them in the home. It will not be a positive change and will not result in more people getting the benefit. An additional āsuggestionā within each of the options is that alongside the change to the calculation will be the withdrawal of automatic passporting to other benefits or benefits premia (this could have an effect on any tax credits, housing or council tax benefits or on someone else receiving carers allowance because of your entitlement) and removal of the exemption to the benefits cap.
I hope this makes sense to you, and helps to explain what this consultation thing is all about. And letās not forget that whilst benefit claimants are facing a Ā£0 increase this April due to the automatic increase being tied to Septembers RPI, a whole load of DWP Analysts and consultants are making plenty of money to implement these swingeing changes. Still as long as someone ābenefitsā eh??
Please donāt forget, I am not an expert of PIP or any other benefit these days. I am just another benefit claimant who has the ability to read this junk and make some sense of it. It is all my interpretation of the DWP consultation document.
Sue