Disability Diary

Disability Diary for Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance

When applying for DLA, the aim is for the decision maker (be it the benefit department or tribunal) to be able to form a good picture of what an average day is like for you. Your diary should therefore to be as complete as possible.

Please include things like:

Your moods (if you have a mental health disability)
What you do during the day
What you decide not to do during the day
What other people do for you
What you don’t do because there is no-one to help
What you do for yourself but you find difficult because of your disability
Any difficult situations you encounter

Remember that entitlement to DLA depends on the amount of help you reasonably require. This does not mean the amount of help you actually get. For example, someone who only showers once a week because the disability makes it impossible to shower on the other days, would have a reasonable need for help with personal hygiene on every day of the week. Similarly, a person that dresses him or herself without help, but can only do so in 30 minutes would have a reasonable need for help with dressing, because a non-disabled person would dress in around 2 minutes.

The following is a brief example of a diary for DLA (yours should be more detailed):

Monday 6 Feb

5.00 am	Woke up early due to night sweats. Had trouble getting back to sleep because I felt fearful and was in a lot of pain.
11.30am	Got out of bed, but only because my social worker rang me after I missed an appointment. Couldn’t be bothered to get dressed or wash and spent the afternoon watching TV.
12.45	The doorbell rang. I looked through the window and there was a man with a clipboard. I got very anxious and hid.
4.30pm	My mother visited. She opened my post and we sorted out paying a bill that had got in arrears. She nagged me for a bit until I had a shower and then helped me with cooking a dinner. I hadn’t taken my tablet this morning and mum reminded me about that. She put tomorrow’s tablets in a glass by the kettle so I wouldn’t forget.
7.15pm	I friend rang to see if I wanted to go out. Didn’t feel like it. I got very tearful and down after that thinking about stuff. I just went to bed.