A worked example showing how each of the 12 PIP activities can be described for someone with diabetes. Every answer is written in the first person, in the plain wording assessors look for, and each one weaves in the reliability factors that decide how an activity scores.
Diabetes is one of the hardest conditions to put on a PIP form, because the form never asks about the diagnosis. It asks what you can and cannot do, and with diabetes the difficulty is spread across a dozen small jobs that have to be done right several times a day: testing your blood glucose before every injection, working out a dose, drawing it up correctly, timing food around it, and watching yourself for the signs that something is going wrong. Most people write "I have type 1 diabetes and I inject insulin" and stop there, which tells an assessor almost nothing about the help they actually need.
The part that gets left out most often is monitoring. The form question about treatments asks about monitoring changes in your health as well as taking medication, and that is exactly where insulin-treated diabetes bites. If you have lost your warning signs and no longer feel a low blood sugar coming, you cannot reliably spot the thing you are supposed to be watching for. By the time you know, you are already confused and cannot count, read a meter or work out what to take, so somebody else has to test you, treat you and stay with you until you come back up. Needing another person to step in like that is the heart of the answer, and it belongs on the form in plain words: who does it, how often, and what happens on the occasions nobody is there.
Then there is the damage that builds up over years. Nerve damage in the feet leaves them numb and burning at the same time, so you cannot feel the ground under you, you cannot feel a stone in your shoe or water that is too hot, and your balance goes. Ulcers open up, take months to heal and are made worse by every walk. Damage to the eyes blurs and patches your vision in a way ordinary glasses do not fix, which affects reading a meter, a pen dial, a medicine label and a kerb. Those complications are what turn diabetes into a daily living and mobility problem, so describe them by what they stop you doing rather than by their medical names.
Everything then runs through the reliability rules. An activity only counts as something you can do if you can do it safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in a reasonable time. Managing your insulin unsupervised when you cannot feel a hypo coming is not safe. Walking to the postbox once, when your foot then throbs all day and the dressing comes back marked, is not repeatedly. Reading a dose you have to ask someone to confirm is not to an acceptable standard.Not every one of the 12 activities will apply to you, and leaving one alone is the honest answer, because an honest form is a stronger form. The DWP always makes the final decision, but describing your real days accurately gives your form the strongest chance of being understood.
What to cover for each one. Your paid form writes the full answers for you.
Describe what happens if your blood sugar drops while you are cooking: the shaking, the muddle, the blurred vision, and whether you have abandoned a half-made meal or left the hob on. Explain how long you can stand at a worktop before the pain in your feet makes you sit down, and mention a perching stool or anyone who stays nearby in case you go low. Say how often that happens in a normal week and whether you could manage a simple cooked meal safely with nobody else in the house.
This question includes remembering when to eat, which matters when meals have to be timed around insulin, so describe any reminding you need to eat on time or to take something after a low. Say who does the reminding and what has happened when it did not come, rather than writing about your diet. Be honest that once a meal is in front of you, you can eat it yourself, because a clear boundary here makes the rest of your form more believable.
Explain that numb feet mean you cannot judge how hot the water is, so there is a real risk of scalding, and mention anything you rely on such as a bath thermometer or someone testing the water for you. Describe the trouble keeping an ulcer dressing dry, and the fact that you cannot bend down or see well enough to wash and check your own feet, so somebody else has to look at them. Say how steady you are standing for a whole shower and what you use to stay safe, such as a shower seat or grab rails.
Passing water more often when your blood sugar is high is not the same as needing help with your toilet needs, so do not stretch this one. What counts is genuinely not managing: not getting there in time, wearing pads, needing help to get on and off the seat or to clean yourself, or accidents at night or while you are low. If none of that applies to you, say so plainly, because an honest answer here keeps the rest of your form credible.
Describe the difficulty getting socks and shoes on over a dressed or ulcerated foot without damaging the skin, and any help you need to do it. Explain that you cannot see well enough to tell whether a sock has rucked up or a seam is pressing, and you cannot feel it either, so someone has to check for you before you put a shoe on. Mention how much longer dressing takes on the days your feet are at their worst.
This activity looks at how you are on most days, so slurred speech and confusion during a low sit better under monitoring your health than here. What would count is something lasting, such as hearing loss, nerve damage affecting your speech, or needing somebody with you at appointments to explain what the doctor has said and check it has gone in. If you speak, hear and understand people normally on an ordinary day, leave this one alone.
Explain what your vision actually does now, such as blurring, patches you cannot see through and days when it is much worse, and be clear this is not something ordinary glasses fix. Describe the everyday things you cannot read on your own, such as the meter display, the units on your pen, medicine labels and hospital letters, and say who reads them out to you. Mention any magnifier or large-print setting you depend on instead of only saying your sight is poor.
Describe how the fear of going low in front of people, and how you behave when you do, keeps you from seeing anyone unless someone who knows what to do comes with you. Explain the encouragement or company you need before you will go out at all, and how often you cancel or turn things down. Keep this to how you manage with people face to face rather than to how far you can walk.
Explain what happens to sums, bills and decisions when your blood sugar is low, and give things that have genuinely gone wrong, such as a payment made twice or post left unopened for weeks. Mention that blurred vision makes statements and small print hard to check on your own, and say who goes through them with you. Give a sense of how often the difficulty is there in a typical month so the pattern is clear.
Describe what happens if a low starts while you are out: whether you become confused, whether you can still work out where you are or get yourself home, and whether you have been found disorientated or needed help from a stranger. Explain the company you need on an unfamiliar route and any journey you will no longer make alone. Remember this question is about planning and following a route, not about how far you can walk, which belongs under moving around.
The tips above are general pointers. Your paid form gives you a full, ready-to-copy answer for all 12 activities, written from your exact conditions, medication, aids and bad days, not a general example. This is a worked example for diabetes; yours is written for you. £99.99 one-off.
This is a worked example, not a script. It shows one honest way a person with insulin-treated diabetes might describe their days, so you can see the level of detail and the plain wording that assessors are trained to look for. Please do not copy it word for word. Your own answers should reflect your diabetes: how often you test, whether you still get warning signs, who steps in when you go low, what your feet and your sight are actually like, and the help you get or go without. That is what the assessment is about and that is what makes an answer ring true.
Being honest about what diabetes does not change makes the difficulties you do describe far more believable, so there is no need to stretch every question. The strongest diabetes answers are specific about the monitoring, the person who has to intervene, the state of your feet and what walking does to them, and honest everywhere else. If you would rather start from your own words, tell us about your health and we will write your answers from your own conditions, in the same first-person style, ready for you to read, edit and copy onto your PIP2 claim form or AR1 review form.
Tell us about your diabetes in your own words and we will write one full activity for you, free, before you pay anything.
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