*Very* fluctuating care needs in DLA for child case - suggestions welcome

Hi all,

I’m assisting with an MR for a child of 14 who has failed a DLA assessment on renewal.

I have a good idea of the attention/supervision needs from the child’s mum but there’s one task in particular I am not sure how to handle.

In essence, there are fairly regular periods whereby the child needs mum to administer IV medication several times per day - each session may last on average 20 minutes but can be longer if there is resistance from the child. One of the three treatments also needs to take place at night after the child’s bedtime.

These courses of treatment last for a full 2 weeks, but each 2 week period is around 12 weeks apart. The ‘break’ period may change if the child becomes ill and the next course could then be brought forward. Looking at the last year however the period is pretty consistent.

The question is therefore how would you average this attention? I’ve examined CDLA/12315/1996 which suggests a common sense approach of looking at a fortnight but we are potentially looking at having to average over a much longer period here - if averaged over a year this is roughly 10 minutes per day which is neither use nor ornament!

So any ideas how to handle such a case where there may be long gaps in treatment? There are enough other attention/supervision needs to probably argue for low rate care anyway at the least.

Apologies if I am being a bit daft, to be honest I’ve hardly had to look at DLA since PIP arrived. Thanks in advance for any suggestions offered.