Disability benefits and fluctuating symptoms

[MrsStressBall]

How do benefits assessments work for people with fluctuating symptoms - bad days and good days? For example, some autoimmune conditions? What if you're having a "good day" when you're assessed so can walk etc fine, but on another day you might be in horrendous pain so holding down a job where you need to be reliable and turn up every day is impossible?

Essentially you just have to say that on the form. Be as honest as you can and write how many days are good days and how many are bad in a week. Youll get people coming along telling you to fill the form in as if it’s a worst day but that advice is actually incorrect and can lead to people being done for fraud. You do need to write extra for each question with things like autoimmune conditions - the form doesn’t lend itself well to those things so you need to make the form fit by writing lots.

Thank you and sorry for delayed reply - I only just saw this!

Treat the person reading it like they're idiots and explain everything.

I second the pp who said don't do bad days only - they know this is the advice people are given and it can actually make them feel you're exaggerating everything you say. Example, I suffer with blackouts and was told by CAB (many years ago as we don't have one anymore) to write my forms in terms of needs when unconsious - which I'm obviously not 24/7.

Treat every question as if it's being read by a different person, don't cross reference questions and continue on a separate sheet,months assume they know what a diagnosis means, I actually ignore diagnoses when writing about my conditions I just concentrate on needs.

I always include a diary of my needs, and I do a diary for a standard day and another diary for a bad day

I've several conditions but many change. One of the things I was told by my specialist about my blackouts was that they can happen 24/7 and that must be stated all the time, they don't happen that frequently but the risk is there.