How to answer the capability for work questionnaire

Every tick box maps to a descriptor written into the regulations, and a descriptor is a very specific sentence. Cannot raise either arm as if to put something in the top pocket of a coat or jacket is a whole test in itself. Saying you have shoulder pain does not engage it; describing what happens when you try to lift your arm does. So read the question as written, answer that question, then use the free text box underneath to say what actually happens when you attempt the activity. Aids count: the assessment assumes any aid you normally use, or could reasonably use, so say whether you use one and what it does and does not fix. A tick with an empty box beneath it is the commonest way a genuine case ends up underscored.

Being able to do something once is not the test. Guidance to assessors is explicit: if you can perform a task but cannot repeat it within a reasonable timescale, you should be treated as unable to perform it. The same applies where you can only manage it in severe pain, or unsafely, or where doing it once puts you out of action for hours or days. So the useful answer is not whether you can, but what it costs and how soon you could do it again. How far you get before you stop, how long before you could set off again, what the rest of the day looks like afterwards. Those four ideas, reliably, repeatedly, safely and within a reasonable timescale, run through every activity, including the ones whose wording does not spell them out.

It varies is a real option on the form, and for a fluctuating condition it is often the honest answer. The problem is what happens next. The legal test is whether the descriptor applies for the majority of the time, or on the majority of occasions when you attempt the activity, and it varies tells nobody whether that is met. The form gives you a follow-up box for exactly this reason. Fill it with frequency: how many days in a typical week, how long a bad spell lasts, how much warning you get, what triggers one. Guidance accepts that someone who clearly meets a descriptor on three days a week and nearly meets it on the other four can have limited capability for the whole week. That conclusion is only available if the pattern is on the page.

Assessors are told to record a factual account of your everyday life in your own words, without their interpretation, and it is the section a decision maker leans on hardest. It is also the easiest place to hand over a version of your day that is more capable than the real one. People describe what they manage on a good day, or leave out the help they get because it has become normal. Describe the day accurately, including the parts you would not usually mention: who prompts you, what you have stopped doing, what you started and abandoned, what happened the last time you tried. If your worst days and your best days are far apart, say so, and say how often each one comes round. That is the pattern the majority test needs.

None of this is an argument for overstating anything. The report cross-checks what you write against your medication, your treatment, your history and what you say at the assessment, and an answer that does not fit the rest of the file weakens the answers that do. It is also a declaration: the form you sign says the information you have given is correct and complete. The aim is the opposite of exaggeration. It is precision about a bad day that you have probably learned to describe in the mildest terms available, because that is what people do. If you cannot remember how often something happens, say you are not sure rather than inventing a number. A free welfare rights adviser will work through the form with you, and on a borderline case that is worth more than any phrasing.