Attendance Allowance refusal - 85 year old man with Macular Degeneration/registered sight impaired

Will be considering assisting the above gentleman and was intrigued by this paragraph in the MR decision -

“When considering your entitlement to Attendance Allowance, it is the level of care needs arising from a disability which determines this. The help with your care needs must be reasonably required and the use of simple aids can be taken into account, providing it is reasonable and practical for you to use them. If by using an aid this negates the need for help from another person, then you are said to be carrying out tasks independently.”

I was obviously under the mistaken understanding that having to use an aid would be beneficial for the client but obviously it counts against them. This seems somewhat perverse considering that for PIP/ADP (under state pension age) then the use of an aid will gain you points towards an award!

Yes, for DLA and AA any aid used that means that someone does not need help from another person will reduce the amount of “frequent attention” that a person needs throughout the day, to qualify particularly for AA.

You can look at the whether any help is reasonably required, even if an aid is used. If someone wants to remain stoically independent, and say, uses a shoe horn to put on shoes, it might take them a significant amount of time longer to put on their shoes, even with the shoehorn, so help may be deemed to be reasonably required.

You could also look at the normal life test, to see what the 85 would like to be able to do, should they not have a disability. Would they like to do hobbies, such as gardening, fishing, cooking, house work that they can only do with support in order to live a “normal life” and would take ages without support even with some aids.

I hope that may broaden out the claim

Thanks for that reply, focusses the mind a bit more as have only dealt with PIP for adults rather than DLA/AA.