PIP activity 5: Managing toilet needs or incontinence

Whether you can get on and off the toilet, empty your bladder and bowel, and clean yourself afterwards. It also covers managing incontinence.

It doesn’t cover: Getting to the toilet, managing your clothes, and climbing stairs.

• If you have an indwelling catheter or a stoma, you’re treated as incontinent for this activity.
• You can manage incontinence yourself with pads (5B) even if you haven’t asked a doctor for help with it.
• You don’t need a formal diagnosis, but what you describe needs to be consistent with your other evidence.

• Describe a representative pattern, including your better and more difficult days. Explain how often each difficulty happens over time. The PIP rules consider the descriptors that apply on more than half of days across the relevant period.
• An activity only counts as something you can do if you can do it safely, repeatedly, to an acceptable standard, and in a reasonable time (no more than twice as long as someone without your condition). If any of these isn’t true on most days, say so and explain why.
• Be specific. Give distances, how long things take, how often problems happen, and examples of things that have gone wrong.
• Name any help you need using the words the DWP uses: supervision, prompting, assistance, or aids and appliances. “My partner helps me” is too vague; say what they do and why.
• Describe what your condition stops you doing, not just its name. Assessors score how your condition affects you, not the diagnosis.
• Use your own words, including when you manage independently. Explain what you mean by “I cope” or “I sometimes have difficulty” with specific, truthful examples rather than avoiding accurate facts.

• Describe your ability to get on and off the toilet, manage bladder or bowel needs and clean yourself afterwards.
• If you use aids, appliances, pads or a stoma or catheter, explain the practical support needed in your circumstances.
• State whether another person assists and the actions they undertake, not merely that they 'help with toileting'.

• Difficulty reaching the toilet is distinct from managing toilet needs once there.
• Undressing and dressing are generally addressed in the dressing activity.
• You do not need to provide unnecessary embarrassing detail, but enough functional detail is important.