Help please!

chocolatefrog

Hi, hope someone can offer some advice.

I am just doing the PIP application for my daughter. Do you have to give real life examples of things that have gone wrong? So, for preparing food, she is constantly supervised because she has a learning disability. She gets distracted and loses focus so food could burn / boil over, or she could burn herself but it doesn't happen because we are supervising and constantly prompting her or intervening. How do I prove that these are issues, when they don't actually happen. Thanks in advance!

OverlyAnxious

Hi,

This is one of the difficulties with PIP evidence and there isn't a simple answer or one that suits every persons situation.

There's no specific need to provide real life examples but it helps to prove functional ability where there's no medical input for example.

I think the best option in this case is to explain that you are constantly prompting or intervening and to provide one or two examples of near-misses that would have ended badly if you weren't there.

chocolatefrog

Thank you @OverlyAnxious I will do that. Also can I ask about motivation - most of the time we have to prepare her meals, will they just say she is lazy? She has a restrictive eating disorder so she really couldn't care less about cooking food. Thanks

Kimi87

If the lack of motivation is linked to a health problem then you absolutely need to mention it.

OverlyAnxious

You're welcome. Lack of motivation should be considered if it's part of a condition. Though I'd say it's not particularly relevant in this case as you should be aiming for 4 points for supervision/assistance in the meal descriptor. A lack of motivation would generally only score 2 points for prompting.

poppy123456

Even if there is medical evidence that's relevant to the PIP descriptors, it's always helpful to include those all important real world examples.

anisty

They definitely won't say she's lazy. This is a good example of where you can point out your daughter lacks drive and include paperwork reports that detail her learning difficulty. Do not worry if the report you have is from years ago - they know it's still relevant.

I had the exact same dilemma on this very descriptor for my adult son who has a diagnosis of autism with a learning difficulty.

He doesn't cook at all because he has no drive to eat. I submitted reports that were ELEVEN YEARS OLD (!) one - his autism diagnosis which was a detailed report.

Two - his cognitive assessment which specifically highlighted a difficulty with task initiation

Three - an old paediatric report showing that his low weight was monitored up until he was 16yrs and discharged from paediatrics.

I even wrote on the form that i was sure we could teach him to cook a meal safely but it would take a long time and he'd never do it as he never feels an urge to eat.

That was proven true when, specifically to answer this descriptor correctly for the pip form, i taught him to make macaroni cheese. Oh my goodness, did that highlight the issues!

He did get something on the table but has never made it since as he only likes my macaroni cheese!

I can't remember how many points he scored on that descriptor but they did lean heavily on those old reports and he got double enhanced with no f2f assessment.

And - though i had ticked the box to say he had no problems dressing himself, they awarded there saying it's unlikely he can pick out the right clothing, given his problems. They were right too, as he wears the same clothes every day! They did phone his support worker to check a few things - i think having a contact who is outside your family but knows your daughter well can really help as well.

Good luck!

chocolatefrog

@anisty Thank you so much for your reply, so very helpful and reassuring. We had a great psychologist at one point who did all the cognitive and autism testing so I am going to include those reports even though they are about 3 years old. On one of them she has assessed my daughter's domestic skills as being equivalent of a 10 month old. So hopefully they can see the barriers that my daughter faces. I honestly don't think I could ever teach her to reliably cook for herself. That said, I am still panicking that I'm not wording it right, I'm glad I've typed up my answers because I have re-written it so many times!

poppy123456

If the reports you're sending are very long it would definitely be worth while buying a high lighter pen and marking the most important parts, especially the parts that are relevant to the descriptors.

This is exactly what I did for my daughter with her first review for PIP. The reason I did that was so that they wouldn't miss any of the most important parts because both reports are very long. She has ASD and a learning disability and I sent both reports for her first review. I didn't have the reports the first time I claimed because she wasn't diagnosed until after she was awarded.

There's no right or wrong wording to use when filling out the forms, just tell it how it is and make sure to include those real world examples.

chocolatefrog

Good idea, thanks for the tip @poppy123456. Her EHCP on it's own is 47 pages long so the important information could easily be missed.

poppy123456

You're welcome. Yes, my daughter's EHCP was about that long too but I decided not to send it because there wasn't much in there that wasn't covered in the other reports. Please remember that less is often more. Sending in multiple pieces of evidence all saying the same thing isn't helpful.

chocolatefrog

Thanks @poppy123456 I have pulled out a massive stack of paperwork but I'll go through it again. Thanks for the tip - I was planning on sending the OT and Speech and Language reports but most of that has been transferred in to the EHCP so I'll probably just send the EHCP instead.