Disability living allowance and personal independence payment
If your child is entitled to DLA or PIP, it may be affected if s/he is looked after and accommodated. The rules are different depending on whether s/he is staying with foster carers or in residential accommodation – eg, a residential unit. If your child’s DLA care component/PIP daily living component stops, and/or you are no longer caring for your child, any CA you get may be affected (see here).
Foster care
DLA (both care and mobility components)/PIP (both daily living and mobility components) continues to be paid while your child is living with foster carers. However, the person to whom the benefit is paid may change. It is likely that you (or your partner) are the ‘appointee’ for your child’s DLA. This means that you are the person who receives payment. If your child is no longer living with you, this will probably change. Your child’s foster carer or the local authority may become the appointee.1Reg 43 SS(C&P) Regs Appointeeship for DLA should stop if your child is looked after and accommodated, unless the arrangement is expected to last for less than 12 weeks.2Reg 43(4) SS(C&P) Regs Tell the Disability Benefit Centre (see Appendix 1) immediately if your child goes to live with foster carers unless the arrangement is unlikely to last for more than 12 weeks. If there is disagreement about who should be a child’s appointee, the DWP decides. There is no right of appeal against this decision.3Sch 2 para 5(y) SS&CS(DA) Regs; Sch 3 para 1(m) and (n) UC,PIP,JSA&ESA(DA) Regs DLA for children will start to be replaced in Scotland from 2021 by child disability payment. It is expected that child disability payment will continue to be paid if your child is living with foster carers.
Residential accommodation
After 28 days in residential accommodation, the care component of DLA/daily living component of PIP stops.4Regs 9 and 10 SS(DLA) Regs; regs 28 and 30 SS(PIP) Regs The mobility component continues to be paid. Two or more periods in residential accommodation separated by 28 days or less are linked and count as the same period for this purpose.5Reg 10(5) SS(DLA) Regs; reg 32(4) SS(PIP) Regs See here if the child spends time away from residential accommodation – eg, at home with you. Example
Seb is aged 12 and gets the DLA middle rate care component and lower rate mobility component. He becomes looked after and accommodated on 1 August and goes to stay in a residential unit on that date. On 21 August he goes to stay with his grandmother. At this point, he has been in the residential unit for 19 days (the day he went in and the day he left are not counted6Reg 9(7) SS(DLA) Regs). This arrangement lasts until 15 September, when he returns to the residential unit. He has been at his grandmother’s for 26 days. The care component of DLA stops being payable on 25 September (assuming he remains in the residential unit until then) because he has been there for a total of 28 days. The two periods are linked because he was at his grandmother’s for only 26 days. DLA mobility component continues to paid. Tell the Disability Benefit Centre (see Appendix 1) immediately if your child is looked after and accommodated in residential accommodation. If your child is entitled to the mobility component of DLA or PIP (which continues to be paid), the person to whom this is paid may change because of the rules about appointees (these are the same as if your child goes to live with a foster carer - see here). DLA for children will start to be replaced in Scotland from 2021 by child disability payment. It is expected that the care component of child disability payment will stop if your child is looked after and accommodated in residential accommodation for more than 28 days.7Reg 11 DACYP(S) Regs (draft)