We're Launching a DLA Application Service — Here's What to Expect

Disability Living Allowance, or DLA, is a benefit a lot of parents have never heard of, or assume closed years ago. It didn't — it's still very much open, but only for children under 16. We're now building a dedicated DLA service to sit alongside our existing work on Attendance Allowance, Pension Credit and PIP, and we want to explain what it is, who it's for, and what we're building before it launches.

What DLA is, briefly

DLA for children helps with the extra costs of looking after a child under 16 who needs considerably more looking after or supervision than another child their age, because of a disability or long-term health condition. It isn't means-tested, it's tax-free, and it's paid on top of Child Benefit — claiming one has no effect on the other. Crucially, there's no fixed list of qualifying conditions: DWP looks at the actual care and supervision your child needs day to day, not a diagnosis on its own, which is exactly why so many eligible families never apply.

Who it's for

DLA for children is available up to age 16, after which a young person usually needs to move across to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) instead, following DWP's own transfer process. Adults have not been able to make new DLA claims since 2013 — that's PIP territory now. So if you're a parent or carer of a child under 16 with a disability, long-term illness, or a condition like autism, ADHD, epilepsy or a learning disability that means they need more care than other children their age, DLA is very likely worth checking.

What we're building

• A dedicated eligibility check that walks through the age rules, the care and mobility components, and what evidence actually helps a claim.
• Support gathering the right evidence from schools, health visitors, GPs and specialists — often the hardest part of a DLA claim for busy parents.
• A guided process for describing your child's day-to-day needs in your own words, capturing the kind of detail — how often things need repeating, what a bad day looks like — that's easy to leave out on a paper form.
• The same success-fee model we use across our other services: no money upfront, and a fee only if a claim is actually awarded.

To be clear about what we are: we're an independent, technology-led application support service, not the Department for Work and Pensions. Applying for DLA directly through GOV.UK is always free. Where we aim to add value once the paid service launches is in the preparation and evidence-gathering that so often makes the difference between an award and a refusal.

Coming soon

Our dedicated DLA service isn't live yet — we're still building and testing it properly. Register your interest below and we'll be in touch the moment the full service is ready.