Attendance Allowance for neuropathy: the danger you cannot feel

Can you get Attendance Allowance for peripheral neuropathy? Yes - and the claim's logic is unusual enough to spell out, because neuropathy disables by SUBTRACTING information. Feet that cannot feel the floor make every step a guess; hands that cannot feel the pill, the button or the bath water turn small tasks into supervised ones; and the same numbness that removes sensation removes the warnings - heat, injury, the stumble beginning - that protect everyone else. The form's questions about falls, supervision and unfelt danger were practically written for this condition. Whether the cause is diabetes, chemotherapy's long tail, B12 deficiency or the idiopathic version that arrives with age, the claim runs the same way - on the missing signals and the person who now stands in for them.

Where neuropathy lands, question by question

• Question 33 (moving indoors) - walking on feet that report nothing: the wide slow gait, the eyes doing the ankles' job, the furniture trail, stairs only with rail and person.
• Question 34 (falls) - the harvest of missing feedback: counts, dates, injuries, whether you can get up. Neuropathic falls are frequent and under-counted because they feel "clumsy" rather than clinical - count them anyway.
• Question 40 (supervision) - "not aware of common dangers" in the printed list fits exactly: the unfelt scald, the shoe rubbing a wound nobody noticed, the cut that announced itself as blood on the floor.
• Question 31 (washing) - bath water tested by someone else's hand (burns are the neuropathy classic), feet washed, dried and INSPECTED by another because you cannot feel or reach what is happening to them.
• Question 32 (dressing) - numb fingers versus buttons, zips, laces: the fine-motor tax, paid twice daily.
• Question 36 (medicines) - pills that cannot be felt in the hand or picked from the box; the nerve-pain drugs and their drowsiness; who manages both.
• Questions 42 to 45 (night) - the burning hours, below.

The walkthrough gives each question's mechanics; neuropathy's job is supplying the missing-signal stories.

The foot-care ritual is a daily care need

Every neuropathy clinic teaches the same drill - daily washing, careful drying, inspection for the damage you cannot feel, nails cut by professionals - and every line of the drill is question 31 material when hands, eyes or backs cannot do it alone. Write the ritual as the care it is: "my wife washes, dries and checks my feet every evening because I cannot feel injuries; in March she found an ulcer I did not know I had; podiatry cuts my nails." The unfelt-injury incident, dated, is the paragraph's anchor - it proves the ritual is protection, not pampering, and it is exactly the substantial-danger logic the supervision route runs on.

Nights: when the nerves turn the volume up

Neuropathy's cruellest joke is that feet which feel nothing all day burn, stab and electric-shock all night. The night section takes it in the form's units: the wakings from pain (times and minutes), the night medicines someone fetches, the covers rebuilt off the feet with a cradle or a person's help, and the 2am bathroom trip on numb feet in the dark - the single highest-risk walk in the house, escorted in any wise household. If a partner now sleeps lightly listening for the stumble, question 44's watching-over test is met in its plainest form. The higher rate lives in these hours; claim them in numbers.

Hands matter as much as feet - and get forgotten

Foot neuropathy hogs the attention while hand neuropathy quietly dismantles independence: buttons and zips surrendered (question 32), pills unmanageable (36), pans dangerous and knives worse (35), the kettle poured by guesswork until someone intervened, jars, keys, hearing-aid batteries. Audit one ordinary day for the moments fingers failed and someone else's succeeded, then distribute the findings across the care questions with frequencies. Where grip failures have caused drops, spills or burns, date them - the hand version of the falls ledger, and just as persuasive.

Name the cause, claim the function

Question 16 wants the diagnosis line as your clinicians write it - diabetic peripheral neuropathy, chemotherapy-induced, B12-related, idiopathic - with dates and treatments, and the prescription list attached. Then the care questions run on function alone, which matters because families over-focus on cause: the DWP does not pay more for a fancier aetiology, and an idiopathic claim with honest numbers beats a well-labelled one with adjectives. Where the cause brings siblings - diabetes with its hypos, the cancer history, kidney trouble - the multiple-conditions method applies: list everything, write the interactions ("the neuropathy hides the warning my knee gives before it buckles"), pool the nights.

Evidence with a neuropathic shape

The bundle per the checklist: prescription list (nerve-pain drugs tell their own story), the neurology or diabetic-clinic letter, podiatry records (professional foot care is standing evidence of the risk), and the diary - falls, near-misses, unfelt injuries found, night wakings, all dated. Ask the GP to note the functional facts with the topics list: numbness extent, falls, foot risk, night pain. The carer statement from the person who checks the feet and hears the nights routinely outweighs every test result in the file.

The money and the next step

£76.70 or £114.60 a week - £3,988.40 to £5,959.20 a year - tax-free, no means test, the usual Pension Credit doors behind either rate. Neuropathy usually worsens by millimetres, which is exactly why claims drift unmade for years - there is never a dramatic day to trigger the form. Let arithmetic be the trigger instead: the two-minute check tonight, the diary this fortnight, and the date-protecting phone call this week, because no backdating ever refunds the drift.

What a strong answer looks like

Question 31, from a neuropathy household: "I cannot feel water temperature, so my husband runs and tests every bath and shower after I scalded my foot last year without noticing until the blister. He washes, dries and checks my feet every evening - in March he found a cut I could not feel - and podiatry cuts my nails every six weeks. I shower only when he is home, because my feet give no warning before I stumble." The missing signal, the substituted person, two dated unfelt injuries, the professional involvement, the supervision rule - five sentences carrying four different questions. The diary catches the incidents while they are dateable; memory files them under clumsiness within a month.

Chemotherapy's long tail deserves its own sentence

For readers whose neuropathy is the souvenir of cancer treatment: claim it as the current, physical condition it is. Question 16 takes "chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, since 2023" alongside the cancer history; the care questions run on today's numb feet and fumbling hands exactly as above; and the oncology follow-up letters that mention it are ready-made evidence. Survivorship's quiet costs are chronically under-claimed - the treatment ended, so everyone stopped counting - but the benefit counts what persists, and neuropathy persists.

Aids, and the third column again

Question 27's equipment table earns its keep here: the wheeled walker chosen because sticks need feeling the ground, the bath thermometer bought after the scald, the pill organiser someone else fills because fingers cannot, the bed cradle keeping covers off burning feet, the sock aids that half-work. The third column - what difficulty you have using each - is where neuropathy shows its teeth: equipment that needs sensation to operate cannot fully substitute for it, which is why a person remains in the loop at every station. Tick the professionally-prescribed box where podiatry or the clinic supplied items; it is quiet independent evidence.

Subtracted sensation, substituted people, dated incidents: that is the whole neuropathy claim, and every piece of it is already happening in your house. The form just needs telling - with the date protected, this week.

Balance tests the eyes cannot pass at night

One mechanism worth a sentence on the form because decision makers may not infer it: numb feet force the eyes to do the balance work, so darkness removes BOTH systems at once. That is why the person who potters safely at noon becomes a falls risk on the landing at 2am, and why the night escort is not overprotection but engineering. Write the mechanism plainly - "in the dark I have neither feeling nor sight to balance with" - and the night supervision arrangements stop needing justification. It is also the sentence that makes sense of a dual claim with dizziness where both are present.

If one instruction survives this page, let it be the incident log: every unfelt injury, every stumble, every scald-near-miss, dated the day it happens. Neuropathy erases its own evidence by definition - the household's notebook is where the feeling gets kept.

Notebook open, feet checked, escort agreed for the dark hours: the household's protective system is already the claim - this page has only shown you where each part of it belongs on the paper.

Numb is not nothing - on this form, described properly, it is everything.

Common questions