The Times today carried an article entitled “NHS will cough up for music lessons and manicures.” It was referring to the three year trial of personal health budgets, whereby people in the NHS Continuing Care programme are able to determine themselves, how best to spend the money allocated to them. 
Their budgets are of course typically spent on many items one routinely sees in schedules of loss, namely: carers, mobility aids, domestic assistance and medical expenses. However, the article makes reference to less usual expenses, such as manicures, hairdressing, musical instruments, theatre trips, craft materials and cooking utensils. The article mentions one woman with depression, using some of her budget to learn dress-making; another with multiple sclerosis, having used theirs to purchase a cat and reflexology sessions; and another with chronic lung disease, using theirs for singing lessons.
It is clear that such disperate, diverse and unusual uses for the personal health budgets were greatly therapeutic to the individual patients. However they are rarely seen claimed for in domestic personal injury cases.
Particularly, the use of “assistance animals” is something which is not always appreciated in the UK (beyond guide and hearing dogs), as it is in other parts of the world. Certainly in the USA they are medically recommended by physicians to help temper the symptoms of a range of physical and psychological illnesses. The author has had some experience of observing a case in the US Federal Court in May of this year, involving a woman with depression allegedly caused following a personal injury, who had a rather fine Airedale terrier who was trained to demand attention when it sensed his mistress was feeling low, thus distracting her from her condition. She described the dog as being essential to her health and wellbeing and hinted that he had prevented several suicide attempts.
Should personal health budgets become the norm, the range of expenditures is likely to broaden away from the more conventional expenses associated with long term care. This will undoubtedly affect the range of heads of loss litigators are likely to come to have to consider. Should “assistance animals” become to be more recognised as an effective non-medical means of mitigating the symptoms of injuries (probably more commonly psychological), lawyers can expect to increasingly come across claims for the same. Perhaps in time, it will be necessary to have Ogden Tables for the life expectancy of different types or breeds of animals, or suggested actuarial tables relating to the cost of their keep.
NB, these cats are NOT assistance / service animals