Refusal to change job coach or re-refer for WCA

if she was married for 45 years prior to husband’s death, she must be in her 60’s and would,apart from the pension date change, not have to worry about it at all….

presumably her mental health and other issues are evidenced in the gp notes/records?

equality act provisions may assist?

and late appeal from the WCA result…..good grounds for late late, one would have thought,

Although it’s dealt with extremely concisely, I read their reply as confirming that they have refused to revise. Therefore the decision should now be appealable.

Is this Work Coach a qualified therapist? For some people it is not helpful to be told to ‘keep your mind off’ a bereavement or other serious issue. Possibly the officer meant well, but this kind of patronising, homespun approach to work search is not in the Work Coach job description. No doubt the claimant should also ‘pull themselves together’.

In CH v SSWP (CE/3627/2013) Mr Jacobs helpfully clarified the confusion between the merits of working and the risk of trying…

“10. As to the nature of the provision, it is concerned with risk, not benefit. The tribunal should have investigated and considered what risk, if any, would be involved in finding the claimant to be fit for work. Any benefit, assuming that it could properly be proved, might be relevant as evidence on risk or the lack of it, but that is all. The issue is risk. If a substantial risk is established, the provision applies. And it applies even if it is accompanied by some chance of improvement in the claimant’s condition. It is not permissible to ignore that risk or to decide that it is a price worth paying for that eventual benefit.”

Further, RR v SSWP makes it clear that UC conditionality should be subjective to the claimant’s circumstances - is there any evidence of such analysis by the DWP? If no and a sanction follows, an error of law looms.