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Changes in your circumstances

Changes to your circumstances can affect whether you should get Attendance Allowance or the amount you get. This includes if your care needs change, if you go into a National Health Service hospital or a care home, or if you go abroad to live or visit.

It is important to contact the office that deals with your payments.

Your disability or medical condition

Changes in circumstances include you, or someone you claim for, needing less help with personal care or supervision, because your condition has improved or you have an aid to help you.

If your condition, or the condition of someone you care for, gets worse and you need more help, this could mean that you, or the disabled person, can get more money.

National Health Service (NHS) hospitals

Changes in circumstances include you, or someone you claim for, going into or leaving a National Health Service hospital.

• Hospital stays and your benefits

Care homes

A permanent or temporary stay in a care home can affect your Attendance Allowance.

• Care homes and benefits (health and well-being section)

Going abroad to live or visit

If you are going to live abroad permanently you cannot usually get Attendance Allowance.

If you move to another country in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland and you already receive Attendance Allowance, you may continue to get it under certain circumstances.

If your visit abroad is temporary, you may continue to get Attendance Allowance if:

• Taking disability benefits to other European countries

Living in Great Britain

To get Attendance Allowance you must generally be ordinarily resident in Great Britain, or be treated as being present here, and meet certain other conditions about your residence and presence.

You must generally:

• be ordinarily resident in Great Britain (England, Scotland or Wales)
  
• be present in Great Britain when you make your claim
• have been in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey or Guernsey for at least 26 weeks out of the last 52 weeks (this does not apply for people paid under the special rules)
• not be subject to immigration control

Immigration control does not stop you from getting Attendance Allowance if you are:

• a family member of a national of a European Economic Area country
• working in Great Britain as a national of a country which has an equal-treatment agreement with the European Union - that is Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and San Marino
• living with one of these workers as a member of their family
• a person who has been allowed to come into or stay in the UK because someone has agreed to be responsible for your maintenance and accommodation

You may be treated as living in Great Britain if you are:

• a member of HM Armed Forces serving abroad or a member of their family
• a mariner or civilian airman working abroad
• working on the United Kingdom sector of the continental shelf - on an oil rig, for example

If you are getting Attendance Allowance and you move to another European Economic Area country or Switzerland, you may continue to receive it under certain circumstances.

If you are already living in another European Economic Area country or Switzerland, you may be able to claim Attendance Allowance under certain circumstances.

• Taking disability benefits to other European countries
• Claiming disability benefits if you live in another European country