Hello all

I have just been to a tribunal to try to get a client's lower care DLA upped to middle care. I am pretty sure that the tribunal chair said in his summing up that having soneone at the end of a telephone line (or in this case a warden controlled flat), to aviod danger to himself did not consistute continually supervision or frequent attention. Not being a welfare rights officer with the relevant knowledge, I assumed that this is correct, as I could not see a tribunal chair getting this wrong, however I can't help feeling I have seen something somewhere relating to a commisioners decision that said needing to have someone at end of phone to avoid danger to yourself does consisitue continaully supervision. I am right, if so can anyone point me towards the relevant commssioners decision. Also, not having asked for a set aside before, is it possibe to get a written statement of what a tribunal chair said in a decision, so I can check that he did say what I thought he said.

Many thanks

To constitute “attention” the attention must be given in the physical presence of the disabled person (reg 10C of the DLA Regs and reg 8BA of the AA Regs). There is no corresponding provision for supervision.

However, what is given is starting the inquiry at the wrong point. It is not what is given that is important but what is reasonably required. Of course what is given can be indicative of what is reasonably required and that is where you might wish to focus your inquiries at this point.

You will need to get the tribunal’s written statement of reasons to see if it has misdirected itself in law. You have 1 calender month from the date of the hearing to request this.

It can be argued that if someone actually has regular telephone contact with another person to provide attention, this is capable of amounting to evidence of a reasonable need for physical presence - ie, when clt is feeling really low and like taking an overdose it helps if he rings the crisis line and has a chat with an adviser for an hour, but what he could really do with is someone on the spot to come and help him through it.

Not sure how this applies to supervision. There's a court of appeal case (Moran, no relation I presume) which says the supervisor could be in the next room or even asleep as long as they were attuned to the claiamnt's needs and could intervene directly. However for the night needs, which is "watching over", they must at least be awake.

There was a commisioners decision that reached the court of appeal some years ago and found that assistance given over the phone could amount to attention. Unfortunately the law was changed to reverse this straight away, so 'attention' has to be given in the physical presence of the claimant.

I agree with the above posts that the tribunal still has to consider what's reasonably required, not whats actually given.