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Can anyone explain how DLA renewal works, please?

Hi, my youngest has a degenerative eye condition (currently partially sighted and will get worse with time) and autism. He was granted DLA in January, and thankfully doesn't have a renewal date until 2021.
I have no idea what to expect for the renewal form. What will I need to provide for the renewal?....all the same supporting documents etc and fill out the form all over again? It took months to get all the information together first time round and I'm dreading having to do this every 18 months.
Plus now he's been diagnosed, he doesn't really get new letters from the hospital or CAMHS, so do I just copy the original ones from last year, or ask them to send me new ones, dated more recently?
Any help or advice would be really appreciated.
I have no idea what to expect for the renewal form. What will I need to provide for the renewal?....all the same supporting documents etc and fill out the form all over again? It took months to get all the information together first time round and I'm dreading having to do this every 18 months.
Plus now he's been diagnosed, he doesn't really get new letters from the hospital or CAMHS, so do I just copy the original ones from last year, or ask them to send me new ones, dated more recently?
Any help or advice would be really appreciated.
Replies
OK, so I can keep asking the school, specialist and council disability support officer for letters each time?
It may be worth having few copies of any evidence you send and I would always copy anything I send off to them and keep it all together in a folder, you can then add to this as new evidence is received.
It is good to start to prepare but try and relax
Nope, you're not the only one. You can ask them yes but i wouldn't worry too much about new evidence, if you don't have anything new just use what you did for the existing claim.
Yes, I will try to relax now
It is a shame that they can't just do a continuous claim given that your son's condition won't get better. I know it's something that PIP do in certain circumstances, not sure if DLA offer continuous claims though
Add in one extra complication. Parents of sight-impaired children are generally (understandably) terrible at assessing what’s a consequence of the sight impairment and what is personality with far too much being attributed to the latter than the former. Children get labelled clumsy or careless rather than sight-impaired. They get labelled grumpy rather than tired as a direct consequence of the effort of seeing. Worse still medics concentrate on the clinical rather than the functional so the adults don’t know what they’re looking for and the child doesn’t yet have the language to describe it. Adding autism into that is quite a heady mix. Effectively there are so many variables and so many things could change that a king award doesn’t really usually make sense.