DLA, need for supervison when lone parent has sole care of small child

My client has a sleep apnoea that from time to time makes her very breathless and semi concious for fairly short periods. This mostly happens at night. She has various devices to overcome this but they are not always effective or she is not always able to get to them in time.

She is the lone parent of a small child. We are considering arguing that she has supervison needs at night because of this condition and although the risk to her does not seem very great the risk of the child being terrified and alone at night with a semi concious mother is in fact more serious. Page 117/118 of the handbook describes a very similar case but does not give a citation for any case law- has anyone ever seen any pertinent case law, almost everything I have seen is is based on help being given to bathe a child or similar or things along the gerneral lines of ‘social activities ’ as in the Fairey/Halliday case.

NB this aspect is not the only thing that might qualify her for Mid or High rate care but seems to be something that could and should be raised as well as both (1) b) ii) and c) ii) of s.72 SSCBA specifically mention avoiding ‘substantial danger to himself or others’

Any thoughts gratefully recieved!

I think that the difficulty you would have with this line of argument is that the regs stipulate that it needs to be the disabled person who requires watching over or attention. If the mother is semi conscious and can’t be roused to look after the child, then watching over the mother won’t be enough to avoid the substantial danger to the child. If it’s the child who needs watching over while the mother is incapacitated that won’t really help.

We have recently had a case returned from Upper Tribunal where middle rate care compoenent has now been allowed at a further tribunal hearing because the new tribunal has now (after the Upper Tribunal Decision) accepted that the client, who could be incapacitated by sudden episodes of severe and disabling pain, would not be able to look after (or summon assistance to look after) her children at those times, and there was a risk of substantial danger to them because of their age (2 and 5) which was not so remote that it could reasonably be disregarded.

At night, the issue would be whether, through the inability to respond to any needs of a child, there is a (not too remote) possibility of substantial danger to the children. This probably depends heavily on age (a child under 1 being almost certainly at some risk whereas a 14 year old in good health would probably not be at risk)

Thanks for that sovietleader, your case is exactly what I had in mind (the child in my case is three)- do you know if that particular aspect was discussed by the UT and if it was has it been written up as caselaw?

Ican fax the decision to you if you leave your details on here or e-mail your fax number to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Cheers

Brian