Forum Home → Discussion → Disability benefits → Thread
Fear of dogs could be relevant cause of ‘overwhelming psychological distress’
Judge Hemingway finds fear of dogs might be within scope of the PIP descriptors concerned with the ability to follow the route of a journey, in a case relating to a claimant whose anxiety about dogs was linked to her autism -
‘... if a fear of dogs sufficient to lead to overwhelming psychological distress is present when a
person is unaccompanied outdoors and attempting to follow the route of a journey, and is attributable to one or other of those types of condition, and does impact adversely upon a person’s ability to follow the route of a journey, and is
capable of being sufficiently reduced by the presence of another whilst the route is being followed, then such may, in principle, be taken into account. Whether it is sufficient to establish entitlement in any particular case though will depend upon the precise findings made.’
(para 16 of CPIP/596/2020 published today)
I have come across people with bad phobias of birds, moths and all sorts of common creatures that aren’t generally on leads. My grandma, who had anxiety, used to be terrified of squirrels, which unfortunately for her, were common on the route she had to take to the shops. My grandfather took to covering her eyes and guiding her past them whenever they scuttled into sight. It would have been interesting taking that to a tribunal.
Have had a case where this was a feature albeit not the most compelling aspect. Person with central vision loss (the usual family of retinal dystrophies). Lots of other reasons why they struggled to plan and follow on familiar routes so it was the usual easy 12 points but they did point out at appeal that just as fixed street furniture (and indeed the joy of the moving feast of A-boards) posed an issue so did anything that moved and that was especially true of small animals owned by another person who didn’t feel the need to put them on a lead or better still assumed the sight-impaired person had realised there was a dog there so they must be able to see the lead.
The mere sound of a dogs paws was enough to induce a cold sweat and a physical freeze as they’d had so many incidents where, by not freezing, they had tangled in leads; fallen over; offended someone by kicking or treading on their beloved creature etc.
Very many people will struggle with journeys due to anxieties around contact with strangers, getting lost, getting attacked etc. I suppose if somebody’s anxiety is around dogs but it functionally has the same result of being unable to leave the house unaccompanied, there is no reason to treat them any differently.
Add issues around journeys and hearing impairments resulting in anxiety - particularly in crowded places, crossing a road / traffic etc. due to not receiving those 360 degree audio clues as to what is going on around a person etc. Used to get an lot of DM reasoning for DLA to the effect that claimant can see where they were going so there couldn’t be any needs arising in such situations from the hearing impairment!.
Add issues around journeys and hearing impairments resulting in anxiety - particularly in crowded places, crossing a road / traffic etc. due to not receiving those 360 degree audio clues as to what is going on around a person etc. Used to get an lot of DM reasoning for DLA to the effect that claimant can see where they were going so there couldn’t be any needs arising in such situations from the hearing impairment!.
Indeed. Reverse also true of course. You can hear so few needs arise from the VI!
I once had an appeal hearing preceded by the client’s BSL interpreter finding the PO and spending 10 minutes ripping into him about the many idiotic and plainly wrong assumptions made. It was most excellent. The shame of it was that the PO was one of the good guys in Manchester/Salford and never quite got round to getting a word in pre-hearing to say that he was embarrassed by the DMs decision and was going to concede!
I once had an appeal hearing preceded by the client’s BSL interpreter finding the PO and spending 10 minutes ripping into him about the many idiotic and plainly wrong assumptions made. It was most excellent. The shame of it was that the PO was one of the good guys in Manchester/Salford and never quite got round to getting a word in pre-hearing to say that he was embarrassed by the DMs decision and was going to concede!
Many years ago myself and two colleagues went on a visit to DLA Blackpool and as part of the tour spent some time with some DMs. This was not that long after the decision in Fairey-Halliday and we were doing a lot of appeals for pre-lingually deaf clients. Oxfordshire had a very active deaf community at the time and there was a big historic issue around deaf education locally with its emphasis on lip reading & speech with a ban on learning / using BSL in deaf schools. So many of our clients had been ‘disadvantaged’ in their development of appropriate communication skills. We raised the issue of poor decisions for pre-lingually deaf clients and the assumptions made and lack of understanding / deaf awareness was staggering. At that time the clerk to the local tribunal was involved with the local deaf centre (and was reasonably fluent in BSL) so the tribunals were certainly made deaf aware - woebetide a local tribunal who demonstrated a lack of deaf awareness / considered make an ‘inappropriate’ decision!!