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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Disability benefits  →  Thread

Deafness, reading and cooking activities

Emma B-G
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Welfare benefits adviser - Hertfordshire County Council Money Advice Unit

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Has anyone had success in scoring points in the PIP assessment for reading and cooking based on profound deafness?

My client uses BSL and has very limited ability to read. He went to special school and gained no GCSEs. He relies on other people for help with reading anything. He has been awarded PIP standard daily living scoring 10 points, but was not awarded any points for reading or cooking. I requested a mandatory reconsideration and included an explanation of how deafness can impact on a person’s ability to learn to read. I also sent them a copy of CPIP/2050/2017 which says that deafness “that deafness “may well be a factor capable of restricting or inhibiting a claimant’s ability to learn so… it may have an adverse impact upon an ability to read or understand.”

I also pointed out that the PIP assessment guide says that illiteracy or lack of familiarity with written English should not be considered “except where they arise as a consequence of a sensory or cognitive impairment”. This implies that illiteracy arising as a consequence of sensory impairment CAN be taken into account (and it says sensory impairment, not visual impairment).

The DWP has refused to award points for these activities again on reconsideration, saying that he has no learning disability and no visual impairment. They have also said that reading ability is not relevant for the cooking activity, and hearing won’t affect his ability to cook. The only evidence we have that this claimant has difficulty reading are what he says (via BSL), and what his mother says. (He left school nearly 20 years ago.)

Now considering an appeal.

stevenmcavoy
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no direct experience of this but i think your right that their issues learning to read should count but also….is aid or appliance arguable if they need modified timers/smoke alarms to alert them when food has cooked or there is an issue?

SamW
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Am not able to offer any direct experience.

But I think you have a strong argument about the reading descriptor and whilst the main argument in CPIP/2050/2017 was a bit different I agree that the part you are citing seems to be supportive. I initially thought that the argument is a complete shoo-in but thinking about a bit more I think it is a little more complicated and will come down to a case by case assessment of whether the literacy problems are (in the words of the regulations) “a result of” his deafness. It might be worth looking for any case-law on that concept in general. Is it enough for the health condition to simply be a contributing factor among various other social/educational factors or does it have to the primary factor?

Re. the cooking have a look at CPIP/3739/2016. This at least gives you the principle that an inability to read instructions can be considered in dealing with this descriptor. Although that question will again be considered claimant by claimant and much of what the case is saying concerns people who have poor literacy due to learning disabilities. To be honest I think the DWP are probably correct to say that the sensory impairment itself will not directly affect a person’s ability to cook. Any timer can be set either on the cooker/microwave and monitored visually or for a longer meal where the person does not want to be stuck in the kitchen they can set a timer on their phone? The only other thing I can think of is a very speculative argument that being unable to hear a smoke alarm and requiring one of the ‘flashing’ alternatives means that the person needs an aid to cook safely. To be honest though I don’t really think that is a goer.

SamW
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Crossed posts with you Steven :/

Re. the smoke alarm - my thinking is that if the person is in the kitchen they can obviously see and smell any potential fire/burning risk. So that leaves cooking meals when the person leaves the kitchen. The smoke alarm argument would be that somebody without a hearing impairment would be happy to leave food cooking unattended as the smoke alarm would go off if it started to burn. I’m not sure that is really the case? If the smoke alarm goes off the food is still burnt and the meal ruined.

Mike Hughes
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I think it’s incorrect to say the sensory impairment itself is not capable of directly impacting the ability to cook. I have had a client with 5% hearing and a smoke alarm in the kitchen which they could barely hear even with hearing aids. When you have the ambient noise of a household; an oven; a TV; conversation; a boiling kettle and or pan it’s a leap to assume that loud things will always be distinguishable. They may be heard but are they distinguishable. My client had a smoke alarm going off which they let be because they assumed it was a timer they’d set on the cooker. The smoke alarm largely alerted their parent to there being an issue rather than them so then your into assistance from another person.

Cooking with more than one ingredient also often involves a significant amount of turning e.g. from microwave to pan or from chopping board to pan etc. and a person with hearing loss would potentially have to constantly check in both directions as they wouldn’t be able to rely on the auditory cues the rest of us get. Next time your pan simmers over check out what your senses are doing. You’ll see lots of bubbles high up the pan but assume it’s okay right up until you hear the change in sound which signifies it’s spilling out or is about to. A person with hearing loss may therefore be stood in front of a pan and not necessarily identify that things are about to spill; burn etc. When something else kicks off in another direction you or they can’t assume they will immediately identify what it is, especially if there’s more loss in one ear than the other as a certain amount of directionality. I once had a client who’d no idea their faulty kettle had burned dry and exploded. They just thought they were burning their scrambled eggs and the bang had come from an explosion in a cartoon their child was watching. Anecdotal examples will always be important here.

Also important to understand whether a person was pre-lingually impacted or not as that impacts both the ability to read and the ability to learn and along with that goes the ability to read instructions; used by dates; switches etc. on ovens and microwaves. I think my last case of this sort scored 2 points on reading as a matter of course (pre-lingual hearing impairment) plus 2 on budgeting and 8 on verbal communication.

SamW
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Those are definitely fair points Mike - food for thought (!). I guess it would come down to issues of a reasonable standard - does the extra visual attention that somebody with a hearing impairment has to pay to avoid food burning/fires/pots boiling over etc restrict their ability to do anything else to the extent that they are unable to cook to a reasonable standard.

Something I hadn’t thought of re. perspective - I don’t have any children myself and that tends to be the case for my clients also. So for me some of those cooking tasks (e.g. watching a pot boil) seem very straightforward, but I can see how the moment you add in having to multitask and watch the children as well it can become more difficult.

ClairemHodgson
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and often when people are learning to cook they are not doing so from a recipe book (that only gives you ideas for things to cook/adapt) but are learning by doing/being shown.  one doesn’t actually need to be able to read, to be able to cook

Peter Turville
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see also the discussion here about basic principles from Fairey-Halliday https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/14711/

there are some old DLA decisions about assistance to understand (translate into BSL) the written word inc: CDLA/3433/99 & CSA/721/00

I would suggest it would still depend heavily on the facts of the individual case but it may be possible to argue that a claimant needs help to read ingredients, a recipe, cooking instructions etc. in order to cook a simple meal. A person cannot be expected to live on just one or two meals repeatedly - applying the principle in Fairey-Halliday. Equally a wide range of meals, special diet or culturally appropriate meals are not relevant. It is a theoretical test of their ability to carry out functional activities of preparing & cooking a (i.e. one?) simple meal as one of the proxy tests (Activities) in PIP to measure (compensate for) the additional costs of disability. If a deaf person has learned to cook a small number of simple meals and understands some basic cooking skills (like boiling v simmering) are they likely to require support on most occasions to prepare a simple meal (in the absence of some other limitation)?

The need for aids as mentioned by Mike may be a more profitable argument?

Emma B-G
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Thanks to all who commented on this thread in July, and I apologise that I didn’t return earlier.

We put in an appeal, and have just heard that the DWP has changed their decision to add points for reading and budgeting (though not cooking) to the previously-awarded points of verbal communication and social engagement. So the claimant has now got enhanced daily living and standard mobility, without needing to attend a hearing.

DWP also made a spectacular typo in their letter, saying that they will pay him £4,743.40 every four weeks!

Mike Hughes
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Excellent.