DLA supersession following death of client

Im looking for opinions regarding a clients request to have a DLA award increased following the death of her husband.

Her husband was in receipt of LRC and had prostate cancer for 14 years.

He contracted a nasty cough in January which was misdiagnosed as the after affects of a virus picked up at around christmas time.

His GP had an appointment with him in April 2013 and was concerned about his deterioration so referred him for further tests. He was (eventually) diagnosed with Lung Cancer in July 2013.
He passed away last month and the cause of death was confirmed as lung cancer.

I have done loads of supersessions however not for a claimant who has passed away.

Can anyone give me any pointers as to what effective date i can use here, and if anyone else has experienced supersession requests made after someone has passed away.
He started showing symptoms in January but all i have is a letter from GP confirming that on the 3rd of April he was concerned enough to send him for tests.
No DS1500 as due to several mix ups at the hospital there was no diagnosis until July.

Thanks in advance

This is a bit complicated and quite hard to give a definitive answer on . The key thing is what is the change of circs and when are you saying it occurred. If it was only a change in his level of needs a QP would be applied , so if it was April add on 3 months,  benefit might be payable from the pay day after the QP is satisfied .

For Special Rules supersessions guidance for decision maker’s is :

A supersession to change an award to one made under SR is not appropriate where evidence only comes to light after the customer’s death (perhaps as the result of a post mortem) that he/she did have a “terminal illness”. If the person’s doctors did not know they had a progressive disease and their death in consequence of that disease was reasonably expected within 6 months the conditions in the Special Rules are not satisfied. Any request for a supersession in these circumstances can only result in a decision not to supersede.
Subject to acceptance of lateness, the effective date will be the date on which the customer became “terminally ill”, which is the date of change. A late notification of the C of C from or for people who are “terminally ill” will usually meet the conditions for acceptance. This is because it is inevitable that the “terminal illness” will have brought a great deal of distress and is likely to have caused a delay in contacting us. If the application establishes that the customer was “terminally ill” before the date of claim then if appropriate late revision should be considered. You should carefully consider all the evidence provided when determining the date from which SR provisions apply.

I would advise if you are looking to do this to try to get some medical evidence to send with the claim about what happened when and who knew what when, ie when did it transpire that this was a terminal illness, or a DS1500 with this information. After someone has died DWP find it very difficult to get information from the NHS as records are usually sent away from GP practices etc. You don’t say in your question whether he was hospitalised but also take into account if he was in hospital for any of that period (and not a hospice) the increase wouldn’t be payable. So if it was only July/Aug he was actually Special Rules and he was hospitalised from then it might not be worth it. I’d say send Blackpool as much info as you have and let them unpick it there is nothing to lose.

Thanks Miriam. I was just fishing and am not hopeful to be honest. The clients widow intimated to me that MacMillan said that the money could be backdated from April, however since asking the question i spoke to the macmillan adviser in question who said that they had quite clearly told the client that any award would probably not be backdated. The DS1500 was only issued a few days before he passed away, but that was more down to cockups at the hospital, which has nothing to do with benefit law unfortunately.