Welfare Reform Act and Social Care

I’m starting some work on the impact the Welfare Reform changes are having/will have on our work in Adult Social Services.
The senior management team have asked me to look at how it might affect our charging policy. I am also interested in the wider benefit issues - particularly the Social Fund.
If any one has any wisdom to share with me or any interesting resources I am only too happy to share!

Time to crack on.

Social fund (crisis loans,CCG) due to be localised by April 2013.

So hopefully your LA has a “cunning plan” in mind to deal with this.

If not…...

After due consideration, you might want to feed back that there is “trouble” ahead….

should have been addressed before now, true. not for want of trying on my part, believe me.

OK your timescales are starting to get a bit tight.

The awards letters are coming out to LAs shortly.

Hopefully the CCP Cardiff Cunning Plan was to wait until the letter arrived.

The main problem, as you know,  is that the money is not ringfenced…...

So….. it might all get spent on Potholes….

If you really have nothing in place it might be best to think about a partner who has some experince in this line of work. They can at least offer you ways of administering a grant based sytem.

http://www.familyfund.org.uk/

The situation in Wales is not the same as England.

My task is much more general - about the impact on our service users (social servcies that is). Luckily, I have not been given the job of running Son of Social Fund.
Gareth - any Wales meetings in the pipeline?

I’m hoping to do some work with local authorities in London, looking at how prepared (or not) they are for the various welfare reforms taking place, as well as whether they have considered knock-on impacts to other areas of responsibility such as social care. Very early days though at the moment, and don’t expect to start producing any meaningful information until next month probably as just trying to set up some meetings with key people.

Happy to share as and when though, and would welcome any information that others may have or find out about.

RCT ,, Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent jointly commissioned Wave Hill to do an impact study ,it isn’t specific on service users but more on how the areas are affected economically

It pulls together the stats /projections of the DWP impact studies and the neighbourhood statistics to make projections ..similar to the Sheffield Hallam report

I take it you know of that already but,if not if you contact me than I could tell you who to ask

Gerda

Thanks Gerda. I will get in touch about that.
I am no longer involved in benefits advice/welfare rights but persuaded my line manager that we ought to do some work on this. I’ve seen the report on the SF and other info from the Bevan foundation.

Hi Carol

Let me have your email and I’ll send you a link to my new paper on the impact of the reforms.  It’s in final draft so it’ll be out in a week or so but you might find the current version useful.

I’ll also put you on the WRAC mailing list for info about meetings etc.

thanks Gareth.
co’byrne at cardiff.gov.uk