Most of the rest of Section 2 is devoted to page after page of questions about
your day and the difficulties you have with your ‘personal care’. The only two
pages that don’t relate to this are the ones about Cooking and Someone Keeping
an Eye on you.
The same suggestions apply here as with the mobility parts of the form—try to
give the DWP as much information as you can about why you have problems, what
those problems are and how encouragement and support from someone else helps
you.
· It can be difficult to fill the ‘how many days a week’ box, given that you may
have spells of being relatively well between more debilitating periods of ill
health. This doesn’t mean though that you don’t have some continuing
difficulties on a day-to-day basis. Put down the number of days that some
difficulty occurs, not just when things are at their worst.
· Don’t get too hung up on the ‘how long’ questions! Most people have no idea
how long something takes, so estimate - ‘fifteen to twenty minutes/ up to half
an hour’ etc. However when estimating times, do
remember to think about every
aspect of an activity. The ‘tell, encourage and remind’ boxes are obviously very important where
mental health is concerned. Don’t assume that ticking them will be enough to get
the message across - use the box below to detail the need for this attention,
stressing if it needs to be repeated and detailing what happens if it isn’t -
e.g. ‘My mother has to call me repeatedly in the mornings - otherwise I would
just lie in bed until mid day. It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that the effort
of getting up feels too much. When I’m very unwell I sometimes stay in bed all
day because I feel safer there...’
· If there is any question that lack of prompting, encouraging and reminding
could lead you to neglect yourself or put your health at risk then say so... ‘my
Counsellor says that unless I eat regularly I will become unwell.... When I went
into hospital I had lost two stone...’
