JB
The Going Out Descriptor is concerned with a claimant being able to perform three actions, it is primarily aimed at claimants with mental health issues, cognitive problems or sight difficulties.
The first activity is leaving the house, can you do this on your own, with prompting or only when there is somebody with you. We would expect claimants with agoraphobia or social phobia to score points.
The second activity is whether you can plan a route between two locations using a suitable aid, it is primarily aimed at claimants with cognitive problems.
Finally, can you actually follow a route, routes are broken down into familiar ones and unfamiliar ones and takes into account your ability to traverse the route (not physically) and to deal with issues that you might when doing so, for example a road closure.
For anybody reading this, I would expect someone with sight problems to have difficulties with all of the above activities and whilst I have mentioned agoraphobia and social phobia, these are not the only problems that would enable a claimant to score points.
So for your appeal you need to score 2 or more points from the Going Out Descriptor or two more points from the Moving Around Descriptor to be awarded an Enhanced award.
Have a look at our PIP Claim guide to see whether you would realistically meet the criteria for these additional points. See
www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip Gordon
