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Social contact on the internet
Can’t seem to find this anywhere - does social contact on the internet count against someone for descriptor 16?
Client usually does not see people outside of immediate family and established friends, as she finds it too stressful, and wants to argue that contact with people unknown to her is not possible for the majority of the time, but in her appeal papres there is evidence that at one point she met someone online in a dating site. Her argument is that she knew him by the time they eventually met in person and that internet social contact is quite different to face to face because there is a degree of anonimity and control that you don’t get even in a quite casual face-to-face interaction - I am inclined to agree with her - but wondered if anyone had any experience of how tribunals view this or if it is even consdered for descriptor 16.
Looked at CE4183 2012 but it only addresses face-to-face contact, and couldn’t find any caselaw that specifically addresses internet contact.
Although the first contact was over the internet, they did eventually meet face to face, so therefore it will be classified as social contact.
However, this does not necessarily mean that be excluded for qualifying for any points as someone with limited social contact can still satisfy the criteria.
How many/if any points she is awarded is a subjective decision.
The activity itself is “coping” with social engagement. The attempt at engagement (engagement I hear you say, they’ve just met) is not as significant as the coping with.
Activity 16 recognises, I think, the need for workers to get on generally with colleagues and customers. I suspect most employers would find it unreasonable if a worker made all such engagement conditional on hours of prior email exchanges followed by a nice restaurant meal spoilt only by them slagging off their ex for most of it (hey, I’ve not tried it, just read the horror stories).
Activity 16 recognises, I think, the need for workers to get on generally with colleagues and customers. I suspect most employers would find it unreasonable if a worker made all such engagement conditional on hours of prior email exchanges followed by a nice restaurant meal spoilt only by them slagging off their ex for most of it (hey, I’ve not tried it, just read the horror stories).
What you say is a common sense approach. However, do decision makers/tribunals adopt that approach in practice?
Activity 16 recognises, I think, the need for workers to get on generally with colleagues and customers. I suspect most employers would find it unreasonable if a worker made all such engagement conditional on hours of prior email exchanges followed by a nice restaurant meal spoilt only by them slagging off their ex for most of it (hey, I’ve not tried it, just read the horror stories).
What you say is a common sense approach. However, do decision makers/tribunals adopt that approach in practice?
No, I’m sure some of them have tried it:)
Seriously, I’d like to think so, although common sense and tribunals aren’t always a good match.
“The primary function of this activity is identifying functional capability in terms of social contact, making inclusion of the ability to visit new places inappropriate. Limitation in the ability to get around is identified elsewhere.
Temporality is not the best measure of an individual’s capability in social situations. Scale is important, for example an individual may cope with contact with one or two individuals, but not a room full of people. However, familiarity provides a more appropriate measure in relation to the work place.
The individual’s ability to engage in social contact is the crucial ability.”
From here
I’ve had some limited success by arguing that the passage in CIB/13161/96 about looking at an ordinary flight of stairs, not extreme examples of easy or hard staircases, should apply to social contact. In other words, it’s the ordinary sort of contact people generally have with each other, and if that is precluded or not possible to some kind of reasonable standard then the descriptor should apply.
I’ve also pointed out that the descriptor says ‘social contact’, not ‘all social contact’, and [2010] UKUT 50 suggests that for the predecessor of the current activity 16, only some such contact need be precluded if it’s a significant amount.
Only just got back to this for various reasons - interesting thoughts, thanks. I only want to argue that social contact is frequently precluded so in theory it won’t be fatal, but you know what some tribunals can be like!