All-Work-Test Assistant
(awt20z.exe - 323 Kb)
This program is based on the All Work Test questionnaire. It should give you a good indication of how you would score, but don't rely on it as evidence in a court of law!
I developed it after a nasty experience with the BAMS doctor, and needed some way to keep a record of how my illness was progressing so I could take some evidence of its severity and variability to an appeal tribunal.
One limitation of the software is that it only addresses the physical disability part of the test; it was based on the questionnaire, which didn't have boxes to tick for the mental disability section, this part being presumably left to the judgement of a BAMS doctor.
Originally I got the "descriptors" from a Child Poverty Action Group publication, which is used by Citizens Advice Bureaux and other advice workers. I have updated it from an information sheet from DIAL UK.
I wrote this software after a nasty experience with the All Work Test and with a BAMS doctor who was either incompetent, or malicious (or both!) and who must have thought ME/CFS didn't exist.
I realised that as my condition was fluctuating quite dramatically on a weekly, and even daily basis, I needed to keep track of how I was doing in order to be able to present the evidence to a tribunal.
Once I had got it working (which kept my mind off how bad I was feeling and how badly I felt I had been treated) it took only a couple of minutes a day to monitor the fluctuations and keep a record.
Luckily my own trauma with the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity passed and I have only had minor scares since.
I hope that you will find this useful, it helped me to realise just how limited I was and how incompetent the DSS medic was.
Remember, if you suffer from a fluctuating illness/incapacity this might be a good day and the bad ones may still be lurking round the corner - I was told by the DSS Helpline recently to tick the boxes that represented my condition at its worst and then explain in detail how my symptoms varied.
This is a better way to do it than to tick a box to say you are not too bad and then explain that sometimes you get worse - they tot the score up from the boxes you tick. If you have ME/CFS you might be able to lift that bag of potatoes once, but two or three attempts later could be a different answer altogether.
To run this software you will need a PC running Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, or Windows 95.
Download the self-extracting zip file, awt150z.exe, into a temporary directory/folder and run it. If you are upgrading from a previous version do not over-write results.csv or you will lose your data (make a copy in another folder just in case).
Please feel free to make copies of the All-Work-Test Assistant for anyone you know who doesn't have access to the internet and who might find it useful.
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Download the All-Work-Test Assistant (awt20z.exe - 323 Kb) |
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© Nick Iredale 1998