Able to buy a different brand of food if you have to…

This has been used in several decisions of late in respect of coping with change. Where is it coming from ? Anyone appealed against as justification for no points yet? How did you get on?

Never come across it. I’d like to though - could have some real fun with it.

I suspect it’s aimed at identifying people with extreme OCD/autistic behaviour about food.  Eg. won’t eat supermarket brand baked beans; must have Heinz.

This is typical of the sleight of hand used by DWP to covertly raise the bar and to narrow entitlement.

People with severe autistic behaviour may be perfectly happy to eat any brand of food, but can have other very debilitating routines unconnected with food. 

Similarly, people with various mental health issues can become anxious or even distressed about changes to routine which are nothing to do with what brand of food is available. 

Most people having to try and live on benefit incomes for any length of time are very adept at having to shop around to find the cheapest brands.

The ones I’ve had have been in respect of mental health and learning disabilities. Perhaps I should check if it is the same assessor !

The descriptors require you to show that overall the claimant’s day-to-day life is made significantly more difficult (or cannot be managed) because of difficulty coping with change. So even if they have no difficulty with one particular type of change, they can still score points if they have difficulty with other types of change and their life is difficult as a result.

The WCA Handbook (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-capability-assessment-handbook-for-healthcare-professionals) gives some examples:

“Use of public transport
Shopping
Dealing with appointments at hospital, GP or Jobcentre Plus
Coping with children and their out of school activities”

These are just examples of course and not an exclusive list.

at least its mildly relevant if completely missing the point of the test at hand.

its a step up from reasoning like “has a driving licence” when talking about washing or “has a cat” when asked about cooking.