Both my client who is schizophrenic and and her partner are in receipt of qualifying rates of DLA. She is also on SDA and wants to claim CA for looking after him.

As SDA and CA are overlapping they'd then still have two sdps plus one cp. However in view of her mental health condition I'm loathe to advise her to claim CA in case it has an effect on her DLA ie how can she meet the 35 hour care conditions when the DLA is based on her own care needs.

I'm sure there have been discussions about this before but I can't find it.

I have never seen a case where a persons claim for CA was even mentioned in relation to their DLA. It doesn't seem to be something that is cross referenced.

And even if DLA did consider the activities involved in caring, in most cases the caring responsibilities do not contradict the needs that qualified for DLA.

I would only worry if she was on too high a rate of DLA in the first place, and even then I doubt that they would notice because of the CA.

Might be worthwhile thinking about the nature of the caring that is being done. I quite often find that alarm bells ring but then there are caring activities that don't conflict with the carer's eligibility for DLA. For example it might be quite sensible for two people getting care component based on continual supervision to be supervising each other if most of the time the supervision is precautionary.

Sue

Thanks both

I've explained it all to the clients in writing and left the decision to them

It did come up as an issue in CDLA/3027/2005 discussed here - http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=100&topic_id=3394

Thanks to SimonMee, CDLA/3027 is now available on rightsnet -

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/CDLA_3027_2005.doc

That's very handy.

Cheers