Can help with home work count as care needs?

I had two recent appeals one child in primary school suffered from ADS the other secondary school child suffering from PTSD after RTA in 2007. Both cases children needed help to focus on homework. The child withADS won appel LRC the other child with PTSD lost the appeal. Has anyone else come across this?

Help with school work certainly can. Possibly the tribunal in one case thought the help was reasonably required and the other didn't?

One of the problems with DLA and IB is that it depends so much on findings of fact like this. Two different tribunals can reach different decisions on identical facts and it is possible that the Upper Triubnal wouldn't interfere with either if the reasons for the decision were adequate. That is why you can get a decision set aside for failure to give adequate reasons, only to lose at the second Tribunal which doesn't make the same mistakes.

The correct approach is to consider whether the child requires attention in connection with their bodily functions. Help with homework could count as help in connection with the bodily function of thinking, if extra help is needed because of a learning disability or mental health problem. Similarly, if a blind child needs someone to read instructions to them so they can do their homework, that could count as help in connection with the bodily function of sight and could help them to qualify for DLA.

If the tribunal excluded homework as an activity, without considering whether the child was receiving attention in connection with their bodily functions while doing homework, I would argue that was an error of law.

From the Disability Alliance caselaw digest: "R(DLA)1/07 (CSDLA/133/2005) states that functions of the brain are included within the term "bodily functions", disapproving of CSDLA/867/1997, CSDLA/832/1999, CDLA/4295/200* (123/01) and CSDLA/860/2000 which take an opposing view. See also CDLA/1983/2006 which concerns a person with dyslexia. "