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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Disability benefits  →  Thread

district nurses and managing therapy

BC Welfare Rights
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The Brunswick Centre, Kirklees & Calderdale

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Claimant has chronic condition that requires frequent (more than monthly) procedures to remove abscesses. Usually the hole left behind has to be cleaned, packed and dressed by district nurses coming daily to the home for 10-15 minutes, for a period of 2-6 weeks at a time. Over a year they are visiting more than 300 days.

I argue that this is managing therapy, tribunal says no it is not.  Is this a straightforward error of law or does something mean that this is not actually assistance to manage therapy? Could it be classed as treatment or something else, which is different to therapy?

There won’t be a SoR in this case but I am flummoxed as to why a tribunal would refuse it having accepted the basic facts. Any thoughts appreciated.

Mike Hughes
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Senior welfare rights officer - Salford City Council Welfare Rights Service

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Why is it not monitoring a health condition?

ClairemHodgson
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Solicitor, SC Law, Harrow

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and why will there be no SOR?  first thing i’d ask for, since otherwise how can you possibly understand how they reached that conclusion?

BC Welfare Rights
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The Brunswick Centre, Kirklees & Calderdale

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The claimant does not want me to get a SoR…

Re. monitoring a health condition, is it not beyond that? The tribunal didn’t award a point for that either.

The PIP Assessment Guide says: “Monitoring a health condition means the ability to recognises significant adverse changes in a claimant’s health condition and take corrective action to implement treatment plans or modifications, as advised by a health professional.”

There is an element of monitoring for infection and the like but also health professionals actually performing the physical treatment of wounds caused by abscess removal. Assistance in applying compression bandages, for example, is accepted as therapy. Why not wound care in the home?

Vonny
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Welfare rights adviser - Social Inclusion Unit, Swansea

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Do you think the Tribunal are thinking it doesn’t count because the district nurses do the assistance, nothing in the definitions prevents it from counting because it happens at home, it is not medication, PIP guide for HP’s has help with compression bandages as therapy.
Often we can’t get a SOR when we want to and it is up to the client, not us.

ClairemHodgson
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BC Welfare Rights - 26 June 2019 05:01 PM

The claimant does not want me to get a SoR…

why not?  you can’t help sort it out without .....

Vonny
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Welfare rights adviser - Social Inclusion Unit, Swansea

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If they have an award (maybe not what hoped for) and could risk losing if taken further or just cannot cope with anymore.

past caring
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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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But obtaining a statement of reasons doesn’t commit you to doing anything. You can just get the statement of reasons.

And whilst it is true that if the statement is requested, it will also be provided to the DWP which might, in turn, seek permission to appeal the tribunal’s decision, the odds of that happening are remote in the extreme. In my experience, if the DWP was intending to that it would do it anyway. I’ve yet to deal with a case - or even hear of one in my 20 years doing this job - where the DWP’s receipt of a statement of reasons it has not itself requested has prompted it to seek leave….....

Vonny
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past caring - 27 June 2019 11:05 AM

But obtaining a statement of reasons doesn’t commit you to doing anything. You can just get the statement of reasons.

And whilst it is true that if the statement is requested, it will also be provided to the DWP which might, in turn, seek permission to appeal the tribunal’s decision, the odds of that happening are remote in the extreme. In my experience, if the DWP was intending to that it would do it anyway. I’ve yet to deal with a case - or even hear of one in my 20 years doing this job - where the DWP’s receipt of a statement of reasons it has not itself requested has prompted it to seek leave….....

Completely accept BUT it is not our money…