To complete the DLA form for a child with ADHD, describe in specific, quantified detail how much more supervision, prompting, and safety management your child needs compared to a child of the same age without a disability, and back your descriptions with evidence from the professionals involved in their care. The form is long, the free-text boxes matter more than the tick boxes, and the assessor cannot see your child, so everything they know comes from what you write.
Before You Start
Get the form by calling the DLA helpline and asking for a paper copy to be posted to you. The date of that phone call becomes the start date of your claim, provided the completed form reaches the DWP within six weeks.1Citizens Advice. How to Claim DLA for Your Child Miss that six-week window and your claim date resets to whenever the DWP receives it, which can cost you weeks of backdated payment.
You can also download the form as a PDF from GOV.UK, but a claim made this way starts only when the DWP receives the completed paperwork, not on the day you download it.2GOV.UK. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Children Claim Form The PDF also needs a desktop or laptop and a recent PDF reader; it will not work correctly on a phone, tablet, Apple’s Preview app, or older Acrobat versions.
Before you sit down with the form, pull together your child’s full legal name, date of birth, nationality, and National Insurance number if they have one. Have your own contact details ready, along with the names and contact information of everyone involved in your child’s care: GP, paediatrician, CAMHS worker, school SENCO, educational psychologist, occupational therapist. Keep an up-to-date repeat prescription list nearby so you can list any ADHD medication accurately.
Your child must have needed extra care or supervision for at least three months already, and the condition must be expected to continue for at least another six. Residency requirements also apply, and they scale with age: 13 weeks in Great Britain for a child under six months, 26 of the last 156 weeks for a child aged six months to three years, and six of the last 12 months for a child over three.3GOV.UK. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Children – Eligibility
Writing the Care Component for a Child With ADHD
The care component looks at how much extra help your child needs with everyday activities compared to a typically developing child of the same age. For ADHD, most of this help takes the form of prompting, redirection, and supervision rather than physical assistance, and the form gives you space to describe exactly that.
Prompting counts. If your child cannot start or finish getting dressed without you standing there and reminding them at each step, that is care. If breakfast takes 45 minutes because they keep getting up, wandering off, or getting distracted mid-mouthful, describe the whole sequence. If teeth-brushing requires you to hand them the toothbrush, put the toothpaste on, remind them to brush the back teeth, and check the job at the end, write down each of those interventions.
Safety supervision is a major part of ADHD claims. The form is interested in what would happen if you were not there. If your child would touch a hot hob, run out of the front door, climb on furniture, put non-food items in their mouth, or hurt a sibling during a moment of impulsivity, say so, and describe specific incidents where these things have actually happened. Assessors respond to concrete examples far better than to general statements.
Night-time care has its own questions. If your child wakes repeatedly, cannot self-settle, comes into your room, or needs someone to sit with them for 45 minutes at bedtime before they can fall asleep, quantify it. How many nights a week? How long does each disturbance last? What do you actually do when it happens? ADHD medication side effects around sleep are worth mentioning here if they apply.
Behavioural support during meltdowns, emotional dysregulation, and transitions between activities also belongs in the care section. A morning routine that ends in a meltdown because a school jumper feels wrong, followed by three outfit changes and a delayed school run, is the kind of detail the form is asking about.
Writing the Mobility Component for a Child With ADHD
Children with ADHD usually can walk without physical difficulty, so the relevant route into the mobility component is the guidance and supervision side. The question is whether your child can be walked safely from A to B outdoors in the way a peer of the same age could be.
Describe the specific risks. Does your child bolt into roads? Run ahead and out of sight? Become so distracted by things around them that they stop paying attention to traffic? Refuse to hold hands, or pull away and dart off? Wander in unfamiliar places? Become distressed or dysregulated in busy environments to the point where they cannot walk on? Each of these is a supervision need beyond what a same-age child without ADHD would require.
The lower rate of the mobility component is generally available from age five, and the higher rate can apply from age three where the criteria are met.4GOV.UK. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Children – Rates
How to Write So the Assessor Sees Your Child
The free-text boxes are where claims succeed or fail. General statements like “he needs help with everything” give the assessor nothing to work with. Walk them through a real day instead.
Write about the worst days, not the best. Parents routinely understate difficulties because the routine has become normal to them; the assessor needs the unfiltered version. If getting dressed takes 30 minutes with constant verbal prompting and physical redirection, say those words. If your child cannot be left alone in a room because of what they might do, describe what would actually happen.
Quantify everything you can. Frequency: four toileting accidents a week, three meltdowns a day, waking five nights out of seven. Duration: 45 minutes to settle at bedtime, an hour and a half to leave the house in the morning. Numbers turn a vague picture into a specific one.
If you run out of space, continue on a separate sheet. Write your child’s name and date of birth on every extra page and staple them to the section they belong to.
Evidence to Send With the Form
Supporting evidence strengthens a claim, particularly for ADHD where the assessor is relying entirely on written material. Useful documents include the diagnostic letter from the paediatrician or CAMHS, medication reviews, reports from occupational therapists, any Education Health and Care (EHC) plan, school reports referring to behavioural needs, and letters from any specialist nurse or therapist involved.
Send copies only. The DWP will not return original documents, and it does not accept CDs, DVDs, or USB sticks.5GOV.UK. Notes on How to Fill in the DLA Claim Form for Children Photocopy the entire completed form and every piece of evidence before you post anything, so you can resubmit quickly if the pack goes missing.
Sending the Form and What Happens Next
Post the completed form and evidence to Freepost DWP DLA Child. Write nothing else on the envelope, and you need neither a postcode nor a stamp.2GOV.UK. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Children Claim Form If your paper form arrived with a pre-addressed return envelope, use that.
The DWP will send an acknowledgement, and a decision maker then reviews everything and may contact the professionals you named. A decision letter should normally arrive within three months.1Citizens Advice. How to Claim DLA for Your Child If they write to ask for anything else in the meantime, respond quickly, because delays push the decision back.
If You Disagree With the Decision
If the outcome does not reflect your child’s needs, ask for a mandatory reconsideration. The DWP must receive your request within one month of the decision date. You can submit up to 13 months later, but you will need to explain the delay, and late requests can be refused.6Citizens Advice. Challenging a DLA Decision – Mandatory Reconsideration
Set out clearly why you think the decision is wrong and include any new evidence you have since gathered, such as a fresh consultant letter or an updated EHC plan. If the reconsideration does not change the outcome, the next step is an appeal to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal, which is independent from the DWP.7GOV.UK. Challenge a Benefit Decision (Mandatory Reconsideration)
A Note on Scotland
DLA for children applies in England and Wales. If you live in Scotland, the equivalent benefit is Child Disability Payment, claimed through Social Security Scotland rather than the DWP, and the form is not the one described here.