Hi

I have a client with a severely disabled 19 year old child. As well as DLA, the child was getting IB in their own right. They attend a special needs school on a full-time basis.

The LA are treating the child as a non-dep for the period where they were getting IB.

Proof of the number of guided learning hours has been provided by the school, but not in the form of a learning agreement. The school says that they do not ask any of their pupils to sign learning agreements due to the nature of their disabilities.

The school has also confirmed that the course is funded by the Learning and Skills council.

The LA won't budge and say a learning agreement has to be produced - and the regs (HB Reg 53b) do state that the number of learning hours should be taken from the learning agreement.

Seems grossly unfair that a disabled student is treated as a non-dep because they don't have the capacity to sign an agreement, where a non-disabled student isn't.

Has anyone come across this problem before, or got any ideas of ways around it?

BTW - client is now claiming CTC and CB for child, and IB has stopped so problem not ongoing.

Fri 22-Jan-10 03:50 PM by stainsby

Although the Revenues decision re CB is not binding, the fact is that the person must be in relevant education for the parent to be entitled to CB.

Reg 53(1)(b) does refer to the learning agreement, but it only needs to be signed on behalf of the school, there is no express provision in Reg 53(1)(b) for it to be signed by the student. Could you not get the school to re hash its evidence and just say that the learning agreement in this person's case invloves more than 16 guided learning hours?

I would appeal the HB decision and point out that the evidence for the Council's determination that the person is not in education is simply lacking