disability living allowance meduim rate- child

[tali122]

a friend of mine has a 12 year old autistic special needs child(he is physically capeable ) who is on disability living allowance meduim rate - what other benefits is he entitled to?- ie blue badge, free road tax (or are these for adults only) home improvement grants?, school uniform ? info seems patchy any advice welcome

[saxy_jag]

Try here:
http://www.entitledto.co.uk/

[Pea Pod]

You need to be on the higher rate to get help with anything related to mobility(car tax). I dont know about the blue badge,I think you go to social services for that. Is she getting carers allowance,I dont because my daughter is on income support and it could affect her benefits.

[saxy_jag]

I'm sorry, the link I gave you was only about actual benefits. I should know better, because I used to temp for our social services dept.

My mum has a blue badge. We had to go via her local social services for it. They sent us a form, which we returned and then we got the badge. Mum is on higher rate mobility, so it was automatic, but if you're on anything lower, then you need to get your GP to deal with appropriate parts of the form.

When the OT came to do my mum's assessment for a bathroom adaptation, she also arranged for things like a shower chair etc etc., and has also helped her to apply for extra pension credits.

If your friend needs anything special in the way of home modifications - bathroom adaptations etc., then again, social services will be your first point of contact. They will sent an Occupational Therapist to have a chat with the client and assess the situation, and will then prioritise the case according to strict, written criteria. However, these people are very overworked, even for top priority cases, so your friend should expect a lengthy wait.

Give social services a chance, and they can be very helpful. Social workers and their various team professionals are a much maligned breed. The public only tend to see them when things go wrong, but they make an awful lot of lives go right, and they do, genuinely, have a desire to help people.

[aurelia]

My mother worked for Social Work as a Secretary and had to deal with the blue badge permits. I work in a Special Needs School wth severly autistic children but none of them qualify for a blue badge as none of ours have physical disabilities. Children in our school with cerebal palsy and/or in wheelchairs are intitles to blue badges and also mobility or moobility so tghe family can get a car. Our children's paretns have to buy the school uniform but I think there are grants for schol uniform if you are on Income Support or Family Credit. The children who are autistic and have greater needs are intitled to free meals as eating and drinking is often part of their targets - government targets and they have IEP's which is Individualised Educatioal Programmes.

What many prents don't realise and we need to keep retelling them at our shool is that they must reapply each year fro the free school mealsand/or clothing grants as even though they are enttitleds they must apply yearly or they will muiss ourt and ,must pay for ther year.