Personal Independence Payment for the over 65′s
I have received a number of questions and comments about Personal Independence Payment and people over the age of 65. I will try to answer the question as best I can but please remember I am using the information available at the time of writing and this may change in the future. I have included this link Personal Independence Payment Rules these are the the rules as they stand.
At present if you are in receipt of Disability Living Allowance before the age of 65 then you can continue to receive it after the age of 65 as long as you meet the qualifying criteria, this is important because it includes the mobility element. As we know Personal Independence Payment will replace DLA and the transition process will include people over the age of 65 in very limited circumstances, these circumstances are elaborated on below.
The DWP have stated the following:
A) Only working age DLA claimants who are age 16-64 on the day Personal independence Payment is introduced will be invited to claim the new benefit.
B) Because we will not begin to ask DLA claimants if they want to claim Personal Independence Payment until after Personal Independence Payment is introduced for new claims in 2013 a small number will be over 65 when we contact them.
This is the confusing part in my opinion so let me try and explain it.
PIP will be introduced in stages, initially a limited number of new claims from certain regions of the UK will start in April 2013 then in June 2013 all new claims will be for PIP, no new DLA claims will be allowed. From October 2013 existing DLA claimants will be invited to claim PIP and this should take until 2016 to complete.
For people who are approaching 65 years of age this is where it gets really confusing. If you are 64 on the day PIP starts (April 2013) you will be invited to claim PIP before 2016, this means you can claim PIP even though you are 65 or over at the point of claiming it, what matters is your age when PIP was introduced.
C) If you claim DLA and are 65 or over on the day Personal Independence Payment is introduced you will not need to claim Personal Independence Payment and will be able to keep your benefit beyond the age of 65 as long as you continue to satisfy the qualifying criteria.
This means that if you are 65 or over in April 2013 you will continue to be paid DLA at your existing rates, your award will be subject to existing renewal rules. At some point in the future the Government may decide you can stay on DLA, claim PIP or maybe even claim Attendance Allowance, it is impossible too say at this point which way they will go.
D) We want to see how the assessment for the new benefit works for working age people before deciding if Personal Independence Payment should be extended to people over the age of 65.
You can find the full Q&A document here which is where this text came from.
In short this means that most people over the age of 65 will remain on DLA after the age of 65 until such time a decision is made about Personal Independence Payment.
Disability Benefits – The PIP Assessment
It looks like Personal Independence payment will be rolled out in 2013 regardless of the valiant efforts to get the Government to rethink the welfare reform bill. It is for this reason that I want to write this article, it was never my intention to turn this site into a campaigning tool although it is sometimes very difficult to stop myself from having an opinion; especially when it involves disabled people and their plight.
I have been reading far too many negative stories aimed at disabled people, usually from uneducated and bigoted individuals, my response is a simple one and it is this:
“I sincerely hope you are never touched by disability”
Moving on I think it is about time we started dealing with the practicalities of Personal Independence Payment and more specifically the medical assessment that will effectively make or break many lives. In the rest of this article I think we should concentrate on what we can do now, a plan if you like to be prepared for the PIP assessment.
As we already know claiming personal independence payment will involve completing a form, supplying medical evidence and attending a medical assessment with a trained medical assessor. In a perfect world the DWP appointed assessor will have access to all of the relevant evidence from your own medical team and a complete understanding of your medical condition. Sadly it is unlikely that this will be the case so here are some ideas that you can start to work on now to add weight to your claim.
Keep a Diary:
Your PIP assessment will come around all to quickly, taking steps now to collate information to support your claim will be a great help when it comes to filling in the claim form. Keeping a diary of your day to day life is a brilliant way of jogging your memory about the difficulties you have, most people with disabilities learn to do things their way and after some time that way becomes normal. When you have a problem with daily living or mobility write it down, what where you doing, why was you doing it, what problem did you have, how did you feel, what would happen if you couldn’t do it and what help did you need from someone else, these are all important snippets of information that will help you give examples of what life is like for you.
Collect Medical Evidence:
Medical evidence will form an important part of the claims process, do not leave this part to chance. Whenever you attend your GP or hospital ask for a copy of any letters they issue about you, keep these letters in a file and in chronological order as these will often tell a story about how your condition is deteriorating . Many medical conditions and disabilities have a dedicated organisation that supply factual information about that specific illness including how to fill claim forms in, make sure you know who they are and engage with them. A good place to start is on our disability charities page where you will find contact details for hundreds of disability organisations and charities.
Tell Your Doctor:
When you visit your GP or hospital Doctor tell them about the problems you are having with daily living and mobility, ask them to document this information. It is normal to tell your Doctor about aches and pains, symptoms if you like but we rarely tell them about how we are affected by them. As this medical evidence will be used to assess your claim the more supportive information the better and given it will be built up over time you can not be accused of coercing your Doctor in response to claiming personal independence payment.
I hope that you have found the points above useful or at least thought provoking, don’t under estimate their importance and start now. When the time comes for your PIP assessment you will be so glad you didn’t leave it to the last minute. I will be writing further helpful articles on claiming personal independence payment in the coming weeks so be sure to bookmark this site or why not follow me on Twitter @pipchat. As always I encourage you to comment on anything I write and share it with anyone you feel may benefit from this information.