“altered consciousness” and alcoholism????

Do “blackouts” that result from alcohol consumption satisfy the Remaining conscious descriptor????
(client get blackouts during drinking binges…..not outwith)

Given the alcoholism is an illness it should be….but do decision makers/tribunals take the view is self inflicted and not involuntary??? Would greatly appreciete speedy reply to this and pointers to case law if applicable as have appeal on 6/10/2011 :)
Cannot beleive I am posting this at 22:55 :)

hi -

in CE/903/2010 Judge May looked at consciousness descriptor for claimant with alcohol problem -

he says that, following R(DLA) 6/06, person who chooses to become intoxicated shouldn’t count to meeting the descriptor, and goes on to find that the tribunal was entitled to decide that claimant in that case hadn’t shown that he had alcohol dependence -

suppose this means you should make sure you have solid medical evidence that your client is dependent on alcohol and so his drinking, and subsequent blackouts, are ‘involuntary’.

here are links to CE/903/2010 -
http://www.osscsc.gov.uk/Aspx/view.aspx?id=3042

and
R(DLA) 6/06 -
http://www.osscsc.gov.uk/Aspx/view.aspx?id=1944

cheers ros

In the decision Ros refers to, Judge May says -

“Schedule 2 is in two parts Part 1 relates to physical disabilities and part 2 relates to mental disabilities. The activity of remaining conscious during waking moments is in part 1 and is accordingly related to physical disablement. The claimant in these circumstances requires to establish that his incapacity to perform any descriptor in activity 11 is caused by a specific bodily disease or disablement which is physical. It does not appear to me that on the evidence accepted by the tribunal the claimant has established as a matter of fact a specific physical disablement which would allow for the satisfaction of a points scoring descriptor in relation to activity 11. That is sufficient to dispose of the appeal. It was not necessary in these circumstances to go into the meaning of involuntary episodes of lost or altered consciousness.”

However, more recent case law, such as CE 1222/2010, establishes that descriptors in the “mental health ” part of the Schedule can be satisfied, where appropriate, by physical health problems, and the logic therein should mean that “physical” descriptors can be satisfied by mental health problems

Thanks for the replies folks. Most helpful.

Clients GP confirms that main condition is alcohol dependece and has been unsucessful several times at AA.

Hence the argument will be on “involuntary.”

The poor girl is seriously doing herself damage with her consumption. She is placing herself in dangerous situations. She has a CPN. My first involment with her was in January this year when I assisted with DLA claim. Granted MRCC and LRMC. Info used was from CPN.

Goes for medical for ESA in March and gets 0 points. She was sober on the day so apparently no problems :( :(

This system stinks.

Might Reg 29 apply if she is putting herself in danger?

Do we now have to advise our clients with alcohol issues to get totally hammered before going to ESA medicals to increase their chances of getting their points. The whole WCA is a joke as no other medical evidence or history can be considered until after whatever determination is made. Now I wanna get hammered before coming into work!!

Probably wouldn’t make any difference, my client’s ATOS report noted ‘under the influence of alcohol’ during an assessment taking place at 10am yet still zero points awarded!!

Point was raised but as I suspected the Tribunal preffered to look at the mental health descriptors and awarded points throughout…..15 alone for “Propriety of behaviour…..” :)

The 0 points from the HCP highlights yet again the poor standards within the system!