DLA Update.
Today I've gone through the DLA criteria guide* and highlighted/annotated the parts that apply to me. Despite what the woman at Nottingham City Welfare Rights said, I easily fit the criteria for Lower Mobility and Medium Care. As always with these things, you take it from the perspective of how your disabilities would affect you on your worst day. I'm writing this out mostly for my own benefit, but also I suspect it will be useful to some others to see the criteria matched to non-obvious disabilities.
Lower Mobility:
Require supervision to walk in an unfamiliar place. - Yes. Dizziness, disorientation, sensory overload, panic attacks and unawareness of dangers (most often in conjunction with the dizziness/disorientation).
Lower Care:
Cannot prepare a cooked main meal with the ingredients. - Yes. A lot of the time, I live on what my boyfriend has cooked, or extremely simplistic meals like toast or pasta (which don't count under their definition of a cooked main meal).
Middle Care:
Daytime Supervision to avoid substantial danger to self or others - Reminding to take pills, reminding to eat, reminding to sleep, reminding of appointments, supervision when bathing (often get dizzy/faint in the shower).
Night conditions I also meet, since my sleep patterns cycle at such a bizarre rate that I often have bad days like the above while I'm partially or entirely nocturnal. Apparently my depression is also often at it's worst at night (according to my boyfriend). But I'd never get Higher Care, so I'm cautious about pushing that point. :/
I'm going to have a phone conversation with her to try and convince her to represent me, otherwise I'm going to start going to pro-bono organisations in the area.
*http://jac.judiciary.gov.uk/static/documents/00420_roleplay_dla_aa_guide.pdf
Lower Mobility:
Require supervision to walk in an unfamiliar place. - Yes. Dizziness, disorientation, sensory overload, panic attacks and unawareness of dangers (most often in conjunction with the dizziness/disorientation).
Lower Care:
Cannot prepare a cooked main meal with the ingredients. - Yes. A lot of the time, I live on what my boyfriend has cooked, or extremely simplistic meals like toast or pasta (which don't count under their definition of a cooked main meal).
Middle Care:
Daytime Supervision to avoid substantial danger to self or others - Reminding to take pills, reminding to eat, reminding to sleep, reminding of appointments, supervision when bathing (often get dizzy/faint in the shower).
Night conditions I also meet, since my sleep patterns cycle at such a bizarre rate that I often have bad days like the above while I'm partially or entirely nocturnal. Apparently my depression is also often at it's worst at night (according to my boyfriend). But I'd never get Higher Care, so I'm cautious about pushing that point. :/
I'm going to have a phone conversation with her to try and convince her to represent me, otherwise I'm going to start going to pro-bono organisations in the area.
*http://jac.judiciary.gov.uk/static/documents/00420_roleplay_dla_aa_guide.pdf