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Carer’s allowance and hospital stays
Hi there,
I have a client who was claiming CA for his mother. His mother had a cardiac arrest on the 1st July and has been in hospital in a coma ever since. After 28 days PIP stopped of course and therefore his CA. His is still having to do things for her. He is now her appointee, he is organising her care, seeing her everyday, talking to the health professionals and dealing with her household admin. It seems to him that it is unfair that the daily living component should stop when PIP is designed for helping with any sort of issues relating to their condition and not medical attention alone. He is still having to tend to her needs, he states for 35 hours a week as he previously did. I see what he means. It’s not something that has come up for me before.
She simply cannot do anything for herself due to being in a coma and her son is doing everything still. My question is: is there any case law that shows someone arguing this and PIP being allowed while a claimant is in a coma state in a hospital? It would be interesting to see the outcome.
Thank you for any advice/help in advance.
I’m not aware of any caselaw on that basis and a quick look in Sweet & Maxwell at the relevant regulations doesn’t reveal anything helpful either. The only case that appears to be close is someone arguing that Mobility should still be payable, which was ruled against them anyway (not that would be helpful in this case even if they won).
Whilst I can see the sons frustration fundamentally though I don’t see that there’s any prospect of any sort of successful challenge. Whilst PIP can deal with more than just extra medical costs it’s still intended for the extra costs of living with your disability (obviously many people use it for day to day costs due to the pathetic rate of income replacement benefits but in principle). If you’re in hospital then those extra costs, at least in the eyes of the Government, have substantially reduced if not been lifted entirely and are now being met by the NHS, so it would be the Government paying out twice for the same thing.
In reality I think the son is just going to have accept that neither his CA nor his mums PIP are going to be payable until she comes out of hospital.
I’m not aware of any caselaw on that basis and a quick look in Sweet & Maxwell at the relevant regulations doesn’t reveal anything helpful either. The only case that appears to be close is someone arguing that Mobility should still be payable, which was ruled against them anyway (not that would be helpful in this case even if they won).
Whilst I can see the sons frustration fundamentally though I don’t see that there’s any prospect of any sort of successful challenge. Whilst PIP can deal with more than just extra medical costs it’s still intended for the extra costs of living with your disability (obviously many people use it for day to day costs due to the pathetic rate of income replacement benefits but in principle). If you’re in hospital then those extra costs, at least in the eyes of the Government, have substantially reduced if not been lifted entirely and are now being met by the NHS, so it would be the Government paying out twice for the same thing.
In reality I think the son is just going to have accept that neither his CA nor his mums PIP are going to be payable until she comes out of hospital.
Hi there,
Yeah you’ve confirmed what I thought, thank you