Which conditions qualify for Attendance Allowance? There is no official list - and that is good news for most families

Which conditions qualify for Attendance Allowance? All of them and none of them: there is no official list, and no diagnosis qualifies on its own. Gov.uk puts the test in one sentence - you can claim if you have a physical disability (including sensory disability, for example blindness), a mental disability (including learning difficulties) or a health condition, and it is severe enough for you to need help caring for yourself or someone to supervise you, for your own or someone else's safety, and you have needed that help for at least 6 months. The decision is made on the help, day and night, not on the name at the top of the form. That is good news for the family whose mother has no headline diagnosis, just eighty-nine years and a bad hip, and a warning for the family that expects a serious-sounding condition to carry the claim by itself. Below: the test in the law, what the form asks about conditions, the conditions people claim for most with a page on each, the frailty-and-old-age claim, the invisible conditions that count and the few things that do not.

The test in the law, in one paragraph

Section 64 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 never mentions a condition. By day it asks whether a person is so severely disabled, physically or mentally, that they require frequent attention throughout the day in connection with bodily functions or continual supervision throughout the day in order to avoid substantial danger to themselves or others. By night it asks for prolonged or repeated attention or for someone to be awake for a prolonged period or at frequent intervals to watch over them. Meet the day test or the night test and the lower rate is £76.70 a week; meet both and it is £114.60 - about £1,970 a year more, which is why the nights decide the rate. The needs must have lasted 6 months, or be expected to, and the benefit is not means-tested. The eligibility guide takes the four criteria one at a time; this page takes the conditions.

What the form actually asks about your conditions

Question 16 of the AA1 is a table: the name of each illness or disability, when it started and the medicines or treatment for it. The form defines its own terms - by illnesses or disabilities we mean physical, sight, hearing or speech difficulty or mental-health problems - which is as close to a list as the DWP gets, and it is a list of kinds, not names. Send a printed prescription list and you can leave the medicine columns blank, though the form still wants the conditions named. Question 17 asks which specialists you have seen in the last year, question 19 for your GP, and question 23 for tests and results, so a condition still under investigation has a home on the form too: write what the GP calls it and say the tests are ongoing. From question 29 onwards the form stops asking about conditions altogether and asks about bed, toilet, washing, dressing, moving indoors, falls, eating, medication, communication, supervision and the nights. That is the part that decides the claim, and the section-by-section walkthrough covers every question.

The conditions people claim for most - and the page for each

Every guide below is built the same way: what the condition does to a day and a night, which questions on the form it lands on and how to write the help in the form's own units. Start with the one that matches, then read multiple conditions if there is more than one, because there usually is.

Mind, memory and nerves

• Dementia - prompting and supervision are help, and the nights carry the claim.
• Depression and anxiety - encouragement is help in the form's own words; the least-claimed serious condition.
• Stroke - the visible half and the invisible half: fatigue, aphasia, falls, continence.
• Parkinson's - describe the offs, not just the ons; medication timing and the nights.
• Multiple sclerosis - the energy budget as arithmetic, heat as mechanism.
• Epilepsy and seizures - fits and blackouts are printed on the supervision questions.
• Motor neurone disease - claim the day you are told; the fast routes.
• Neuropathy - unfelt dangers, the foot-care ritual, burning nights.
• Migraines - the dark-room days, counted.

Heart, circulation and diabetes

• Heart failure - breathlessness as a care need; nights on water tablets.
• Heart conditions - AF, angina, valves, devices and the supervised months after a heart attack.
• Peripheral artery disease - the night foot, ulcer-watch and the amputation shadow.
• Diabetes - hypos are supervision evidence; monitoring is attention.
• Amputation - transfers, stump care and the phantom nights.

Lungs and breathing

• COPD - write the pattern, not the good day; inhaler help and breathless nights.
• Pulmonary fibrosis - oxygen is on the form by name.
• Bronchiectasis - the clearance routine is the claim.
• Sleep apnoea - the machine, the watcher and the dangerous naps.

Bones, joints and back

• Arthritis - what 'I manage' is costing: grip, stairs, falls and painful nights.
• Osteoporosis - the claim written in fractures and question 34's numbers.
• Back pain - the bending tax and the mattress negotiation.
• Spinal stenosis - the condition of shrinking distances.
• Polymyalgia - the concrete mornings and the steroid years.
• Gout - attack grammar and the damaged baseline.

Senses and balance

• Sight loss - safety, medication, post and darkness: the help sighted people never notice.
• Hearing loss - the interpreter in your family is giving attention in the legal sense.
• Tinnitus - rarely alone, but the severe combination can claim.
• Dizziness and balance - the attack written as a scene; supervision that unpredictability makes rational.

Gut, bladder and kidneys

• Incontinence - the form asks about it by name, day and night.
• Stoma - when the bag needs four hands.
• Crohn's and colitis - the bathroom clock and flare grammar.
• Kidney disease and dialysis - the one condition with its own regulation.
• Liver disease - encephalopathy's printed reasons and the drain cycle.

Fatigue and whole-body

• Cancer - the ordinary route during treatment and the fast special rules.
• Thyroid conditions - the honest bar first, then the unstable months.
• ME / CFS - the crash economy written down.
• Long covid - a new name claiming by the old rules.
• Restless legs - night needs that can carry a rate alone.

Old age and frailty: when there is no headline diagnosis

The most common question we hear has no condition in it at all: Mum is 88, nothing specific is wrong, she is just frail - can she claim? Often, yes. The law does not ask for a disease; it asks whether she is so severely disabled, physically or mentally, that she requires attention or supervision. Frailty is a physical disability in the plain sense of the words, and clinicians treat it as a recognisable state rather than a euphemism: weakness, slowness, poor balance, exhaustion, weight loss, falls and a memory that is no longer reliable under pressure. None of those is a diagnosis. Every one of them is a care need waiting to be written in the form's units.

At question 16, write frailty and then everything the GP's records actually say - osteoarthritis of the knees, poor eyesight, a heart that tires, a history of falls, low mood - because the form wants all of it and the whole person is the claim. Ask the practice whether a frailty score or the word itself appears in the notes - if it does, it is the kind of medical fact the DWP can confirm with the consent at question 20. Then leave the diagnoses behind and answer the care questions as they are. Question 29: does she need a hand out of bed, and how many times a day? Question 33: the stairs, the chair, the bathroom step. Question 34: the last fall, how many in the last month and year, whether she can get up alone. Question 40: can she be safely left, and for how long at a time? Questions 42 to 44: what happens at night - the toilet trips, the getting up confused, the need for someone awake. Falls and supervision is the guide for this claim, and a fortnight of the Care Needs Diary turns she manages into dated facts.

Mental health, memory and the conditions nobody can see

Gov.uk's own wording includes a mental disability (including learning difficulties), and the form is built for it. Its definition of help is physical help, guidance or encouragement, so reminding someone to wash, prompting them to eat and coaxing them out of bed count exactly as lifting does. Question 40 lists the reasons someone may need keeping an eye on, and they are largely invisible ones: not being aware of danger, the risk of self-neglect, wandering, confusion, self-harm and voices or thoughts that disturb. Depression and anxiety in later life is the least-claimed serious condition on this site; dementia is the most under-described, because the person with it minimises and the family has stopped noticing how much prompting a day contains. Both are conditions that qualify - by their needs.

The conditions families wrongly assume do not count

Four patterns come up again and again. Hearing loss - question 37 asks about being understood, understanding strangers, using the phone and dealing with letters and forms, and the relative who interprets is giving attention. Incontinence - questions 30 and 42 ask about it by name, day and night, and shame leaves them blank. Sight loss - the medication, the post, the cooker and the dark are all attention or supervision. And the intermittent conditions - migraines, vertigo, seizures - where the form's question how many days a week and its rule that usually means most of the time decide whether the pattern reaches the bar. None of these is excluded; each is simply under-written.

Diagnosis versus needs: three households

Conditions with rules of their own

Two exceptions to 'needs, not names' are worth knowing. Kidney failure treated by dialysis two or more times a week, where the treatment normally needs someone present, has a deeming rule in regulation 5 of the Social Security (Attendance Allowance) Regulations 1991 - the day or night condition is treated as met, with an exclusion for outpatient dialysis under hospital staff. And a person nearing the end of life, not expected to live longer than another 12 months, claims under the special rules with an SR1 from a clinician: the higher rate follows automatically, the care questions are skipped and the 6-month period does not apply. Cancer can travel either route, and the guide explains both gently.

What does not qualify on its own

Honesty about the edges protects the claim. A diagnosis with no care needs is not a claim. Needs that have lasted under 6 months are not yet a claim - unless the special rules apply - though the law allows a claim up to 6 months in advance, so a parent three months into new needs can start the process now. Attendance Allowance is about care and supervision, not about getting around: difficulty walking to the shops on its own is not a care need, although the same legs failing on the stairs, in the bathroom and at 3am are, and a Blue Badge has its own route. Gov.uk also rules out claiming while receiving Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment or Adult Disability Payment - which benefit applies depends on when the needs began - and payment usually stops while a local authority funds a care home place, though self-funders claim and keep it.

Scotland and Northern Ireland: the same needs test, different doors

A reader in Scotland claims Pension Age Disability Payment, not Attendance Allowance. Mygov.scot frames the test the same way - care needs during the day or night for 6 months or more because of a disability or health condition - and the Scottish regulations go one step further than the Act by defining attention to include personal care, prompting or motivation in relation to bodily functions or assistance with communication needs, so a claim built on prompting can be written more boldly there. In Northern Ireland the form is the same AA1 and nidirect's wording is needs-first too: help with personal care because of a physical or mental disability for six months, and, in its words, you can get it even if no one is actually giving you the care you need and even if you live alone. Whichever nation, the condition list is the same one this page opened with: there is not one.

Common questions