Rheumatoid arthritis

Hi Trisha123,
The rules for PIP recognise that sometimes people have variable conditions. As a result you can gain points if you can show that 50% of the time you can not do the activity. Likewise you need to be able to do the activity across the whole day as many times as is reasonable. Hence whilst you may only need/want to prepare food 2 or 3 times a day, but you may need to go to the toilet several times per day, and communicating is done potentially all day long.
Have a look at the members guides if you haven't done so already.
There are 4 criteria that apply to each descriptor activity. (All 4 must be satisfied.)
I have mentioned repetition, there is also safety, reasonable time and acceptable standard.
Reasonable time means no more thsn twice the time for a non disabled person. The effect of pain can also be taken into account as this may render the activity not done acceptably.
Let me give an example; if you can physical chew food, but due to shaky hands it always gets spilt down your shirt it may not be done to an acceptable standard. Equally, if due to spilling food, it might take say 20 minutes to eat a bowl if soup that should take only 5 minutes, then that's not a reasonable time either. The hot soup could scald, so that might be a safety risk too. The criteria can stand on their own or may overlap as illustrated.
Keeping a disability diary for a few days can help pinpoint when you might need help throughout the day, or when you are struggling to do an activity.
Go through each descriptor and decide how well ( or not) you do the activity, what help do you need. (This is not help you actually get!) Each heading has a group of activities, ranging from no help to can not do.X. Remember that if you can not meet one or more of the vital 4 criteria, for the majority of the time, then you can't do that task. The rules provide that you can only score once in each section, but if two or more tasks apply equally, then the highest points value should be scored.
By considering the above, that will give an indication of what you should say on the form.
So eg. if you are prone to falling in the bathroom, even though you don't necessarily fall all the time, but there is an obvious risk, which exists all/majority of the time, and if you don't have help to get in the bath, you take far too long and of course risk falling, then it is reasonable for you to say 'I need help to get in/out if the bath, because I can not do this safely unaided and in a reasonable time...[then explain why ]
I hope this helps,

LL26