Does anyone have any experience of getting HR mob for younger children under high care and severely mentally impaired route?
Severely mentally impaired is defined as 'arrested or incomplete physical development of the brain'.
I have a case for a nine year old that I'm fairly happy with, but my colleague has just taken a case for a child who is aged only a bit over three (getting high care already, but obviously no rate of mob). I think I would have great difficulty knowing how to get appropriate evidence to argue arrested mental development at that age -- any ideas ? or does anyone know of helpful caselaw ?
thanks

Hi. CDLA/1545/2004 is very helpful about evidence and also reviews all the main case law.

Cheers Ros

What is the child's diagnosed condition? For example, it might be readily accepted that a 3yo autistic child has an arrested development of the brain but it could be more difficult to show that he had an impairment of intellectual and social functioning. For that see R(DLA)1/00.

It might be argued by the DWP that a 3yo has an undeveloped capacity to learn which makes it too early to tell if he has an impairment of intellectual functioning.

I would argue that capacity to learn, by itself, is not enough to defeat the claim as the intellectual impairment has to be looked at as to how that flows from the arrested development of the brain and is not to be equated with the arrested development itself.

Is the childs "only" disabilty blindness? I ask this because you are with the RNIB.
If it is then mobility award along the route you mention is unlikely.

I would regard this as a difficult appeal taken the need to also prove severe behavioural problems (including the need for physical restraint) and the risk to the claim for night needs that must be substantially greater that those of a three year old without disability.

I deal with the SMI route a lot as I get a lot of children on the autistic spectrum. For a child of this age its very difficult. You would need to show that they had severely delayed development, which means that they should be considerably behind other kids of their age. They would also need to be very disruptive and have severe behavioural problems - so a lot of aggression and violence. I would only go down this route for a child of this age if they had something like very severe autism, clear brain damage or a condition that was obviously not going to improve and was fairly well recognised. If they don't have a definate diagnosis I think you'd be struggling. Alternatively you could go for Lower Mob when the child is 5 and then look at Higher when they are older and the problems are more obvious.

Tue 14-Apr-09 10:35 AM by shawn

(Edited to shorten link)

Hi & thanks everyone for help with this --
CDLA/1545/2004 will be helpful in clarifying the sort of evidence needed, and then R(DLA) 1/00 covers the 'impaired intelligence & social functioning' (which I agree is going to be ever so difficult to argue for a 3yr old).

Yes, both children are registered severely sight impaired, plus they have behavioural and other difficulties. It's actually not too unusual for a child with a severe sight loss to get high rate care due to (usually short-term) night-time emotional or behavioural diffilculites -- a child with some sight in daylight can be very distressed waking in the dark.

As I said, I'm fairly confident with 9 year old, who has an autism diagnosis and the parents have told me there's plenty of evidence re disruptive & aggressive behaviour.
I'm just wondering at what age possible entitlement under this route could be reasonably be argued (6? or 4? ...) ..... obviously all depends on the facts.

re blindness & high mobility -- assuming the WR Bill amendment goes through, we're expecting high rate mobility to be available to some registered blind people from April 2011.

This is our latest info

To answer your question "at what age possible entitlement under this route could be reasonably be argued" the simple answer is the younger the child the more severe the disability, behavioural problems and mental impairment have to be.