Hi can anyone advise me on applying for PIP benefit.
I have been advisedI should be claiming.
Does anyone else receive it and have any advice on how to fill the form in?
Thanks.
PIP isn’t awarded simply because you have a condition, but depending on how it affects your functioning in various areas (called “descriptors”). There are 12 descriptors altogether, relating to things like your ability to prepare food for yourself, to eat, to manage your medication, to wash and dress yourself, to manage your toilet needs independently, speak, hear, read a simple sentence, socialise, budget, to be able to follow a route outside, and to manage to walk various distances within a reasonable timescale.
It is very unlikely that, for instance, someone with “straightforward” diet or tablet controlled type 2 diabetes would meet any descriptors, at least not at a level that would get them an award (you need a total of 8 points to get a basic level award). OTOH someone with brittle insulin dependent diabetes with hypo unawareness and peripheral neuropathy and/or limb amputations would probably score quite highly.
There is a website called something like Benefits and Work (?) which is apparently excellent. If you decide it’s worth claiming, then do be prepared to be persistent, as the DWP will very commonly refuse claims in the first instance. About 75% of appeals are upheld at Tribunal.