At Bristol City Council's Welfare Rights and Money Advice Service, we are reviewing our case file file papers and are desparately in need of a means of consistently collecting appropriate data to carry out benefit checks for clients, and to show on file that proper calculations have been completed. At present we use a number of means at the lower end of the evolutionary scale, ranging from the 'back of the DWP envelope' to various calaculation sheets for individual benefits, most of which were designed for training purposes rather than casework use. What we are idally looking for is something on 2 sides of A4 which would do all of the basic calculations, for at least IS, HB/CTB and PC and enable us to capture sufficient information for Tax Credit/an in work better off calculations to be done where necessary, (most of our clients are older and the proportion in work or with children is quite small) But we accept that the real solution is probably going to be less than ideal, and would be happy to consider any solutions smaller than a telephone directory! Responses welcome, either here, by email to paul_moorhouse@bristol-city.gov.uk or by fax to 0117-377 2855.

There are some benefit calculators available in the swopshop area of rightsnet - see

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/cgi-bin/publisher/search.cgi?dir=swopshop&template=listtemp.htm&output_number=999&sort_field=title_a

Thanks Ken, had already checked these out, but, as far as I can see they are all on-line calculators, not much use when sat in clients living rooms!

I Assume that you haven't got them there posh laptop thingy's - cos if you had you could use QB 8 on it and impress everyone - other than that you can always resort to what we do, (Cos we can't squeeze laptops out of the Governor either) - take all the details back to the office - run it through QB8 and send one copy of the resulting printout to the client and put another in the file (As we do). You can also save a copy to any case management sytem you use I believe.

I can't think of any other way of doing it - other by longhand as you do now - I only suggest QB8 because the resulting printouts are easy for the client to understand in comparison with those produced by most LA's and the DWP: even I can understand it.

Jon Blackwell says your commission cheque is in the post Mike!
Seriously, we use it too, and have for many a year and it is extremely good. I do something very similar to the practice you describe, as you can "personalise" the print out with clients name, etc. which makes it so user friendly (cheque payable to A P Kempton please).
Splott Paul