P.i.p. And autism & and

Hello Rierie and welcome to the forum.

You don't give us a lot of information in your post. I am assuming that your son has had a recent PIP assessment and lost his award. Is this correct? Or is it that he used to get DLA and they have stopped that and not given him PIP?

Catherine

Hi Rierie,

You could be describing the son of one of my friends. I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for you to be turned down.

I helped this friend apply for PIP for her son and some of the points we made, which may apply to your son were -

He is not motivated to attempt to prepare a meal for himself. If he were to be given instructions and he were to follow them, he would follow them literally, for example if told to fill a pan with water and put it onto boil, he will fill it to the very top making it unsafe. Having started the task he will lose focus and both mentally and physically wander off. When assisting with meal preparation he will only do about 25% of the tasks; if the supervisor does not do the remaining 75% he will simply wander off and the meal will remain unprepared. Although his computer is in the kitchen he does not respond when the smoke alarm goes off, just keeps on playing. If someone does not prepare food for him, he simply does not eat.

He is malnourished because he does not eat a balanced diet, even when supervised. He will always prefer to play on his computer than eat.

Depending on the phase he is in, he will either wash and bathe obsessively or go for long periods without washing. At these times he will become malodourous.

He does not see the need to change clothes, so does not get dressed or undressed except for going in the bath. He will attempt to put the same dirty clothes back on after washing on the basis that he likes them. Since he only wants to wear his favourite set of clothes he does not consider adjusting what he wears for the time of year.

He does not see communication to be of any purpose so although he can hear and speak he generally fails to say anything. If he does speak it is because he needs to say something to someone, so he does not listen to the reply, so there is no two way communication. He will only carry out this limited form of communication with people in his immediate circle.

Although he can read he cannot do so safely, since he takes everything at face value. This makes his very vulnerable to scam emails etc, unless he is supported. It once led to him arranging a meeting with someone he had met online but knew nothing about, and he did not intend to take any safety measures.

He does not mix with people outside his family since he can see no reason to engage. He is unable to consider other people's feeling and has no concept of good manners. Anything which is not in accordance with his wishes is treated as a disturbing annoyance.

He has no concept of non verbal communication.

Although he is able to do simple addition and subtraction he has no concept of managing financial priorities and will always spend all his money on computer games.

He refuses to go out of the house on his own, and indeed if he were to he would not be safe. He would not be able to 'read' the outside world and adjust his behaviour to keep himself safe.

We obviously fleshed those out and added examples but hopefully they might give you some pointers.

Catherine

Hi Rierie

I have family members with autism and it is always a challenge to obtain PIP.

Did he have a telephone assessment or a paper-based assessment? If he had a telephone assessment, you want a copy of the report. It is called a PA4. If he had a paper-based assessment, it is a PA3. If you haven't got a copy of the report, you want it, because it will help you make a Mandatory Reconsideration.

Obviously I don't know your son's difficulties, but one of the common symptoms of autism as you will know is that someone can appear far more capable than they are - generally by just agreeing with whatever they are told. So if this is an issue you should say so.

You seem to say in your post that your son has been turned down because there is no formal diagnosis. I don't know whether this is correct, but make sure that you include any old reports or letters that talk of his difficulties.

Do come back if you have any more questions.

BIS