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Child Disability Payment (CDP)

Your rights to financial support in Scotland if you have a child under 16 who is disabled.

We know that many deaf people and families of deaf children don't consider deafness to be a disability. However, even if you don't consider your deaf child to be disabled, they may still be eligible for disability benefits such as CDP.

Social Security Scotland has published a British Sign Language (BSL) translation of their CDP factsheet.

Child Disability Payment

CDP is very similar to DLA in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. It is a disability benefit for children under 16 who are deaf or disabled. CDP will help towards some of the extra costs of raising a child who needs more looking after than another child of the same age without disabilities. It is not means-tested or taxable, and there are no rules about what you can spend the money on.

Eligibility

There are two parts to CDP; the care component and the mobility component. They are paid at the same rates as DLA.

Care component

You can claim the care component if your child needs more help or supervision compared with a child of the same age without disabilities. This can include help with things like:

  • hearing, speech
  • lipreading
  • making themselves understood
  • extra help at school
  • extra supervision they may need to keep them safe, for example with young children to stop them putting their hearing technology in their mouth, is also relevant.

The care component is £26.90, £68.10 or £101.75 a week.

Mobility component

You can claim the mobility component if your child is at least five years old and needs more supervision when walking outdoors than a child of the same age without disabilities. If they have additional needs that cause physical problems with walking you can claim from age three.

The mobility component is £26.90 or £71.00 a week.

Do I have to live in Scotland?

To claim Child Disability Payment your child must live in Scotland or another qualifying country. Citizen's Advice Scotland have more information about the residence and immigration rules that apply.

When you can claim CDP

CDP was rolled out across the whole of Scotland on 22 November 2021.

You can apply for CDP for your deaf child at any time before they turn 16.

If your child attends a residential school

If your child attends a residential school, you can still claim CDP. However, if their accommodation is publicly funded and they spend 28 full days (midnight to midnight) in a row at school, payment of the care component of your award will be stopped. Contact has more information about CDP and stays away from home.

If your child already gets DLA

If you already get DLA for your child, you cannot currently claim CDP. At some point in the future your claim will be automatically transferred to the new benefit. Payments will not be affected, and you will receive the same rates you previously received with DLA. 

Older children will be transferred first, and you will be contacted by SSS when your child has been selected for transfer.

If you receive renewal forms for DLA before you are transferred, you should complete them and return them to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Applying for CDP

There are different ways you can apply for CDP.

  • You can make a new claim online by going to the apply page on the Scottish Government website and applying on myaccount, which lets you save your progress to come back when it suits you.
  • You can phone SSS on 0800 182 2222 to request a paper form and a prepaid return envelope or book an appointment for someone from SSS to help you fill in the form face to face. If you're a BSL user, use the contactSCOTLAND app to contact SSS by video relay.
  • If English isn’t your first language, you can contact SSS to apply over the phone with an interpreter or a paper application form. Interpreters and translated forms are available in over 100 different languages.

Additional help

If you need help accessing or filling in the application form you can contact the free SSS Local Delivery service. A specially trained client support adviser can answer any questions you have in a meeting at your home, in your local community, over the phone or a video call.

Alternatively, if you have questions about how to fill in the form for your deaf child you can contact our free Helpline by phone, text (SMS), SignVideo (video call with a BSL interpreter), contact form or live chat. If English isn't your first language, we can call you back with an interpreter in your preferred language for free.

Filling in the application form

The application is in two parts and should be completed within six weeks of each other. If you don’t think you’ll be able do this, contact SSS.

Include supporting information in your application and keep copies of all the evidence you send.

Your claim will be assessed based on the information you provide on the claim form and any additional information you submit in support of your claim. It may be helpful for you to keep a diary for two or three days to show what a ‘typical day’ is like for you and your deaf child. Include this in your application.

Try to record each time you give your child more attention and supervision because of their deafness. This is what’s important for SSS when deciding whether your child is awarded CDP.

Here are some examples of extra attention or supervision.

  • If you child is very young or a baby, making sure they don’t put parts of their hearing technology in their mouth.
  • Cleaning, refitting, and looking after the hearing technology your child uses.
  • Attracting your child’s attention before speaking to them.
  • Repeating things because they haven’t heard you.
  • Teachers needing to repeat what other children have said in class.
  • Additional help with learning to make sure they don’t fall behind their peers.
  • Being within touching distance of them when outside because they can’t hear road traffic.

Entitlement to CDP care component for young children

One of the legal tests for the care component of CDP is how much supervision a child needs. A child will be entitled to the middle rate of the care component if the individual is so severely disabled physically or mentally that they require from another person [...] continual supervision throughout the day in order to avoid substantial danger to the individual or others.’ This is set out in the Disability Assistance for Children and Young People (Scotland) Regulations 2021 – Section 11 (DACYP (S) Regs .11(c)(ii)).

Continual supervision means frequent or regular, but not non-stop. Your child does not need to be supervised every single minute.

This legal test is relevant to deaf babies and young children who need to be supervised because of the risk of substantial danger from swallowing all or part of a hearing aid or cochlear implant processor, which contains a small button battery. This also includes potential risk to other children, who may pick up or swallow parts of hearing aids or cochlear implant processors if they’re removed or fall out, for example when children are playing.

If it's relevant to your child, you should include information about button battery safety. The audiology department at Great Ormond St Hospital have an information sheet about button battery safety and National Services Scotland (NSS) have produced a safety action notice about the risk of harm to babies and children from coin/button batteries in hearing aids and other hearing devices (SAN(SC)19/04).

Supporting information to include

Including supporting information in your application is very important, as it helps you show SSS how your child’s deafness affects them and the additional support they need. If your child has additional needs, long-term conditions or disabilities in addition to their deafness, include their care and mobility needs in the same application form.

To provide SSS with an accurate picture of you and your child’s lived experience, you should include:

  • medical reports or letters of identification, such as hearing test results, audiograms, ABRs, discharge letters from hospitals and cochlear implant mapping reports
  • current symptoms, their severity and the effect they have 
  • a daily diary of the additional care and attention your child requires because of their deafness and/or their additional needs
  • test results or certificates, care or treatment plans, and therapies or adaptations
  • social care assessments or social work assessments
  • educational support plans or reports or letters from the child’s school
  • the supporting information form filled out by someone who knows or cares for your child.

Supporting information needs to be submitted within 28 days of your application and can be uploaded online and sent in the post (or a mixture of the two). If you’re sending important documents via post, you can send photocopies.

If you’re struggling to find or collect any of these pieces of supporting information, SSS can ask relevant professionals or organisations for information to support your application on your behalf.

For more information about CDP, see the Scottish Government website.

Assessment

After you have submitted your application, SSS may contact you with some extra questions and to get additional supporting information to help them make their decision. This may be over the phone and any answers you give will be used to assess your claim. If you’re busy or don’t have the information they want with you, you can ask them to call you back.

CDP decision

Determination (decision)

When applying for benefits in Scotland, the decision to award you CDP or not, is called a determination.

You should receive a decision from SSS six to eight weeks after you have submitted your form and they have all the information they need. If your application has been successful, your decision letter will include the rate you've been awarded and when SSS will review it.

If you're happy with the amount you've been awarded, your CDP payments should start immediately.

If you’re unhappy with your decision, you can ask for a re-determination.

Challenging a decision

Re-determination

Re-determination is the process SSS uses to review a benefits decision. A different team will look at the decision to refuse an application or the amount awarded and will make a new determination. 

The letter you received will include a decision report. The decision report is where SSS explain their decision and acts as a record of your answers to the questions in the application form and the supporting information you provided. Read it carefully. If you ask for a re-determination, you should point out anything in your decision report that is wrong or inaccurate.

You have 42 days to submit your re-determination form. If you miss the 42-day time limit, you can still ask for a re-determination but you will have to explain why your request is late and it might not be accepted.

SSS have 56 days to complete the re-determination. 

Appealing a CDP decision

If you’re unhappy with your re-determination decision you have 31 days from the decision to appeal. If you miss this, you can still appeal but you must explain why your request is late and your appeal may not be accepted. 

If SSS have taken longer than 56 days to complete a re-determination you can also ask for an appeal.

Your appeal is decided by the First-tier Tribunal, which is independent of SSS. You can choose whether to attend the Tribunal in person, have a remote hearing by phone or video call, or have the appeal decided on the papers. If you have a hearing, you will be asked questions about your child. Your child will not attend or be asked any questions.

CDP review

SSS may choose to review your current CDP or DLA award, to make sure you are being paid the right amount. A review is not the same as a re-determination.

They will ask you to provide more information about the impact of your child’s disability and may request updated supporting information. They may decide to stop your CDP payments or change the amount you have been awarded. You can apply for a re-determination of a review decision.