RNIB Alban
Welfare Rights Service, RNIB, Judd St, London WC1H
Member since 16th Oct 2007
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RE: Visual impairment and physical difficulty walking ESA
Mon 08-Mar-10 08:37 AM |
I agree fully that a person with a visual impairment should score points under 'mental health' activities and descriptors, such as 'awareness of hazards' and 'getting about'.
The LCW test in schedule 2 of ESA regs is in two parts, and there's nothing in ESA regs (see reg 19) that stipulates that you have to have a 'physical' problem to score under part 1, or 'mental' problem for part 2.
Also Claire's point about 'cognition' including sensory impairments is I think fully justified. For every ESA appeal I've done so far I've included in my submission a dictionary definition of 'cognition' to make the point that part 2 descriptors should apply for a visually impaired person. Fortunately/unfortunately we've won the appeals on other grounds, so no tribunal has yet had to concede or reject the point.
The good thing about the ESA vision descriptors is that they take account of both visual acuity - (ability to read 16 point text, recognising person across room/street) - and field of vision restrictions. These are the factors that are taken into account when deciding whether a person could be registered as sight impaired (partially sighted) or severely sight impaired (blind), so at least it is possible to say that anyone who is registered at either level should score 15 points to qualify for ESA.
There are plenty of people, however, with significant sight problems who are not registerable, but they may qualify for ESA if they score 6 points on 'can't recognise person at 15 metres' plus 6 points each for 'getting about' and 'awareness of hazard'.
Thanks for link to that ESA guidance doc. We have no quarrel with blind people (with no other disabilities) going in work-related group, but that example of blind person getting DLA low mobility but not even low rate care is very odd ...
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