Will he qualify for high rate DLA?

AnxiousandAutistic

I have almost finished the DLA form for my 3 year old. He has a speech delay and suspected autism (probably won’t be diagnosed for at least 5 years with the wait times…). I feel pretty confident that I have wrote all I can for the day time care needs sections but I am struggling with the night time part.

His usual sleeping pattern is from around 12am-2am to 11am-12am. He will occasionally go to sleep at 11pm-12am but this is rare. I have seen that I have to prove that he is either a danger to himself or others during this time and needs supervision for that or needs to have care needs during this time. We have to be awake during this time but he will often just sit and watch his tablet until he is ready to sleep and/or play with his trains. If we try to get him to go to sleep before he is ready he will kick, hit and scream and run around and throw things ect, sometimes but we mostly just wait until he is ready to sleep now as it is easier to manage that way and trying to get him to go to sleep earlier just doesn’t work. He has some nights where he will sit and scream and cry and we’re not allowed to touch him but there’s nothing we can do other than offer comfort which he refuses and wait until he is ready…

Does anyone know if we will qualify? I can’t find any similar situations when I google it so maybe it’s quite rare??

poppy123456

I'm not as familiar with DLA as I am with PIP but for the high rate care the following must apply.

Night conditions
a) At night, your child requires prolonged or repeated attention in
connection with their bodily functions; or
b) At night, your child needs someone to be awake for a prolonged
period or at frequent intervals, to watch over them in order to prevent
substantial danger to themselves or others.

Note: Your child’s needs must be ‘substantially in excess’ of what is required by
a typical child of the same age, or your child must have a substantial need(s) that
a non-disabled child of the same age would not have.

For the mobility part because he's only 3 then it would only be the high rate at the moment. To qualify for this he must be either virtually unable to walk or qualify under the severe mental impairment criteria and for this he would need high rate care as well.

There's a lot more detail here. It's an old link with quite old rates but the information in it for the criteria still applies.

https://dls.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/A-Guide-to-Disability-Living-Allowance-Factsheet.pdf