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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Disability benefits  →  Thread

PIP - dyslexia out of scope for comms and concentration for reading?

ZoeHBF
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Welfare and Housing, Helen Bamber Foundation (London)

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I’m drafting an MR for a client who has PTSD, depression, other MH issues along with chronic pain, and dyslexia.

The MR says: “dyslexia is out of scope for the communications task as is concentration for the reading task”.

Is dyslexia as a matter of course out of scope for these things?! It’s not the only health condition we’re arguing for communications/reading, but wanted to check if they can just disregard it altogether?

Elliot Kent
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Shelter

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Conditions are never in or out of ‘scope’ for the purposes of PIP activities or descriptors. It is just about how the conditions affect you. Clearly, dyslexia is more readily relatable to activity 8 than 7, but there is no bar to raising it. You could argue that your dyslexia makes you unable to walk 20 metres if the evidence showed that to be the case.

ZoeHBF
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Welfare and Housing, Helen Bamber Foundation (London)

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That’s what I thought, but apparently in this case PIP decision makers are allowed to say which conditions are flat out ‘out of scope’?! Thanks, as always, Elliot!

Va1der
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Welfare Rights Officer with SWAMP Glasgow

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An example of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I don’t think it’s that they’re ‘allowed’ to use this type of language. There just isn’t much consequence to them for doing so.

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

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Probably not the moment to point out that Dunning-Kruger has recently been comprehensively dismantled 😊

That aside, I think dyslexia also potentially feeds into 1 and 10. There is an excellent Mesher decision with brief obiter comments around 10 and the possibility that a person with sight loss could need help from someone else to read things accurately and that taking longer when someone, for example, has to read stuff to you several times to aid understanding of figures etc.

Whilst not strictly relevant I have found that painting a picture around the inability to decipher use by dates; cooking instructions; knobs on cookers and microwaves tends to paint a compelling picture in terms of needing assistance from another person.