Downloads

On this page you can find a variety of free downloads offering:

  • Excerpts to give you a flavour of the current  Big Books and details of training courses
  • Periodic updates to the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health and Benefit Rates Charts
  • Other free useful resources to help with  key benefits
  • Some older chapters that  we can no longer fit into the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health  – but which may still be relevant to some readers. These will also give you a free taster of what a full Big Book chapter looks like and so what you can expect in the current edition.

Please note that when you click on any of the links below, a box opens up showing you the URL address for that link. You may need to click again on that box to actually get to the download that you want 🙂

1. Big Books excerpts  and training courses

  • Excerpts from the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health 2021-23 edition:   Please click here to see sample pages from the latest 2021-2023 edition. For more details of the contents, how to get your copy, please see the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health page here.  After years of holding the price, lockdown weight gain and rising paper prices, meant a small price increase to £28 this time.
  • Online edition –  As an alternative to a printed copy,  you can access a .pdf flip book that reproduces the copy of the printed edition of the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health 2021-23 to view on screen. You can find out more and take out a subscription (for £24 a year) at the page here.  The text of the online version will be updated later in 2023 to incorporate all the changes in the free April 2022-23 Updater Packs (see below).
  • Training Courses  A range of course – with or without a mental health slant – and adaptable to your requirements.  Please click here to see our current range, but do contact us to discuss requirements, whether we can come to you – in any of the UK nations – or for an online presentation via Teams or Zoom. For more details about how we offer training and costs, please go to our current Training Page here

2. Updater Packs and new benefit rates 

  • April 2023-2024 – Benefit Rates Chart –  This  chart shows the new benefit rates from April 2023 to the next uprating in 2024 . A very welcome – and much needed – 10.1% increase in most benefits , after the time lags when inflation suddenly jumped in early 2022, meant that last year’s 3.1% fell well short of the prices people were experiencing even then. It’s the start of catching up, as it may take until next year uprating to get back to where things were. To download your copy, please click here
  • April 2022-24 Benefits Uprating Pack – For the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health April 2021-24 edition .  A free three-part Updater Pack gives you, in:
    • PART1 – May 2022 – BENEFIT RATES for APRIL 2022-23: updating pages (eg tables, example sums and calculation sheets) for the April 2022-23 benefit rates. This is now of historic interest so don’t bother to keep with your Big Book any more. Use Part 3 (below instead) . Part 1 is still available here
    • PART 2 – March 2023 – OTHER BENEFITS CHANGES: deals with other changes, apart from the benefit rates . It is essentially a complete replacement for Chapter 5 Benefit Changes: an overview (thats pages 27 to 59 in the Big Book),  but it also stands alone as a useful updater. This picks up any changes right up to the March 2023 Budget and the future plans – which won’t happen for some years – in the DWP’s Health and Disability White Paper. Changes include some smaller changes, the slow return of the DWP to “business as usual” and the latest timetables for re-starting the migrations / switch-overs from Adult DLA to PIP and “legacy benefits” to Universal Credit . You can download your copy here 
    • PART 3 –  NEW BENEFIT RATES APRIL 20233-24 . This repeats Part 1,  but now with all those same pages updated to reflect the April 2023/ 2024 rates. It is available here.
  • These three free Updater Packs will bring your copy of your Big Book of Benefits April 2021-24, up to date and ready to take it to through to April 2024 . You can print these Update Packs off – and then either keep them in the back of your Big Book or spend a wet afternoon writing the changes in with a pen or pasting new pages over the top of old ones :-).
  • The contents of these pack will also be fully integrated into the text of our  Online edition (see above) so it will effectively turn  into a 2023-24 edition, and then change totally for 2024-26.
  • There will be a full rewrite of all chapters -in print or online – as we prepare a completely new edition of the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health for 2024 -26

3. Resources for particular benefits:

Personal Independence Payment (PIP): Updated  points and definitions chart: 

The latest chart of PIP descriptors after changes made – and some unmade again – from March 2017.  It’s a  handy reference guide to have by your side when filling in “PIP2 How Your Disability Affects You forms” , but remember it’s not about parrot these back to PIP on your form, but to remind of the hooks to hang a description in you own words of the difficulties you face.; to remember that  “points make prizes” . It can also be a useful ready reckoner to tick off descriptors that seem to ring bells for you ahead of a form filling session. 

Check the guidance on the other side and think about how someone else can help you manage reliably at the worst point on a typical day. To download your copy, please click here  

For more information on relating difficulties to the PIP points see general tips, common issues for different mental health diagnoses and  page by page advice as you fill in the  form,  then  please see the latest edition of the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health. You can see an example of our page by page guidance on the forms by clicking here.

Universal Credit

  • UC Calculation Sheet – April 2023-24 – To download your copy, please click on the link that will soon appear here
  • A simple flowchart of who claims UC and who claims PC or legacy benefits . Amended to take account of the end of the SDP Gateway from 27th January 2021. To download your copy, please click here
  • More detailed changes of circumstances table: When do you have to switch to UC? and When do you have a choice? .Amended for the end of the SDP Gateway. To download your copy, please click on the link that will shortly appear here
  • Surviving a claim for UC: Top Tips – To download your copy, please click on the link that will shortly appear here.

4. Chapters from previous editions

As time marches on, the Book has grown.  The idea of welfare reform  might be to eventually make things simpler, but for some years old systems and new systems will co-exist. So we have had to make hard decisions of taking some stuff out of the stretching bindings 🙂 .

But information about the older benefits for sickness and disability can still be of historic interest, give a taster of the big Books approach or be very relevant for some ongoing claims.

Sickness Route Benefits from the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health  2010 – 11 

Covering covering, form filling, supporting evidence and appeals for:

  • Incapacity Benefit and SDA  – this may still be relevant to anyone  still awaiting the switchover to ESA or should you have any if you may have any unresolved issues or appeals in relation to the old benefits.
  • Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) – pre-2011  –   The old section on ESA  with descriptors, ESA50s, guidance, supporting evidence and appeals arguments  for the pre- March 2011 version of ESA.  Less directly relevant now, as very few people still have issues hanging over from way back then. However,  it may still be of historical interest, from the days when ESA promised a kinder gentler New Deal, and was less ferocious than it became. See the current edition of the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health  for ESA in its current form and differences in how Universal Credit deals with the same Work Capability Assessment.

To download your free copy of the old chapter,  please click here

Attendance Allowance (AA) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

From the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health 2012/13. The full chapter with  explanations, tips and practical tools and page by page tips to help you make claims for AA and DLA  is available by clicking here. This may be useful if you are either:

  • making a first disability claim for Attendance Allowance after pension age; or
  • seeking/facing reviews of an existing award of DLA (for adults) that you took with you into pension age; or
  • facing very similar boxes on a form when making a new claim for DLA (for children)

We still include a reduced amount of useful AA and DLA information in the current editions of the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health , but we also signpost readers to this older chapter, to get the full Big Book of Benefits treatment of AA and DLA.

Time has moved on,  so  the rates of DLA mentioned in that chapter are well out of date. However, the rules and eligibility criteria for Attendance Allowance – and the closely linked DLA – do remain largely the same as back then. As do all the tips, suggestions and sample forms to help you when filling in a claim form or challenging a decision..

We will be updating and re-instating this chapter in the forthcoming Big Book of Benefits, Money and Older People 2023-25, where it will also change to be more directly relevant to people over pension age and cover a wider range of health problems (without losing the mental health baby in the new bathwater 🙂  .

There is some coverage and useful crossover tips for AA and DLA forms still within the current Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health April 2021 to 2023, but it is less comprehensive to allow space for the full treatment of PIP  and its trial and tribulations. PIP’s newer kinder, gentler Scottish cousin – Adult Disability Payment (ADP) – is dealt with alonside PIP as the points system and practical tips are very similar, even if the process has more regard for “fairness, dignity and respect”. If ADP works its useful for the rest of the UK to know and ask why not here?

DLA example forms :

Although DLA adult forms are no longer issued in working age, these example forms can still help with the very similar boxes on AA, review forms for DLA in pension age and claims for  DLA (for children) .The main differences for AA and DLA (for children) forms are that:

  • AA forms will not have questions around getting around out of doors  as sadly there are no extra Mobility amounts in AA. But any mobility difficulties indoors or when engaging with social activities / hobbies can be very relevant; and
  • Child DLA forms will have an additional question related to child development issues and a reminder of “compared to a child of a similar age without a disability” . But remember that additional needs or extra degree of difficulty purely related to the disability,  count regardless.

You can find these example forms by clicking on:

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