The benefits of welfare rights advice

There’s this slightly more recent report from Age Concern (as was) from 2008

Just what the doctor ordered Welfare benefits advice and healthcare authored by a certain Mr Bateman.

And also this from 2014 which I think was commissioned by the Low Review Social Welfare Advice Services – A Review Final report

And finally this from CESI from 2014 also Take-up of benefits and poverty: an evidence and policy review

That’s brill thanks
I’m also hoping someone can reply to question 2.

Thanks again

We’ve certainly done it in the past. Goes all the way back to Chris Orr exploring similar north of the border. Spells out very clearly that you spend x on a welfare rights adviser. This creates y for the claimant and z for the local economy.

There’s also the work done by the Fraser of Allander institute which looks at the number of jobs sustained or created by benefits income.

Thank you Gareth and Mike…

Mike, you said:

“Spells out very clearly that you spend x on a welfare rights adviser. This creates y for the claimant and z for the local economy.”

Do you have the formula? And is there a link to it?

Cheers

Hi Clive,

Undoubtedly, “somewhere” as it’s stuff we used to include in our annual reports back in the analogue age. You could probably email Richard Bundy here and have him dig that out from our archive but I suspect the more recent figures and calculations quoted earlier in this thread will be more relevant and possibly more accurate. Almost certainly no link to it.

The original stuff was detailed by Chris Orr (a man I still hold single-handedly responsible for me losing 8 years of my life to a Supplementary Benefit take-up campaign!). That subsequently informed calculations we did involving standard spending assessment and subsequently formula spending share.

So, we used to do stuff like noting the salary of a specific worker and contrast that with the financial gains made by that worker for claimants. However, we’d then go on to use the multiplier to argue about the impact of those gains within the local economy. Finally, we’d add in the impact on stuff like SSA and FSS as that enabled us to point to further money brought into the local authority. ]

Important to remember that the outcome varies with the role. So people doing pro-active take-up work tended to score higher than people dealing with a specific client group or seeing whatever walks through the door.

Mike

Thanks Mike
Ah yes, the good old days!

University of Strathclyde report on welfare rights and the multiplier.

found this bit of interest in one of the links posted by paul as i agree with it:

“There were also positive impacts associated with the delivery of take-up and support services
by advisers drawn from the social group with whom they would be working, who were more
successful in raising awareness leading to an increase in eventual claims. This is often because
such advisers have the linguistic skills required (or the help of professional/local translators),
understand local cultural attitudes towards claiming benefits, and are better able to empathise
with members of the local community and the problems they face (CAB, 2003; Moffatt and
Mackintosh, 2006). “

One of my frustrations in the response to “welfare reform” policy sphere is that very few of the events that take place seem to have much input from the groups most affected.

its mostly paid professionals, very few with experience of living on/claiming/growing up on means tested benefits discussing how ghastly it all is and then responding by thinking we need to tell people on £70 quid a week how to budget.

Mike Hughes - 07 July 2017 10:26 AM

Hi Clive,

Undoubtedly, “somewhere” as it’s stuff we used to include in our annual reports back in the analogue age. You could probably email Richard Bundy here and have him dig that out from our archive but I suspect the more recent figures and calculations quoted earlier in this thread will be more relevant and possibly more accurate. Almost certainly no link to it.

The original stuff was detailed by Chris Orr (a man I still hold single-handedly responsible for me losing 8 years of my life to a Supplementary Benefit take-up campaign!). That subsequently informed calculations we did involving standard spending assessment and subsequently formula spending share.

So, we used to do stuff like noting the salary of a specific worker and contrast that with the financial gains made by that worker for claimants. However, we’d then go on to use the multiplier to argue about the impact of those gains within the local economy. Finally, we’d add in the impact on stuff like SSA and FSS as that enabled us to point to further money brought into the local authority. ]

Important to remember that the outcome varies with the role. So people doing pro-active take-up work tended to score higher than people dealing with a specific client group or seeing whatever walks through the door.

Mike

im sure many long term tribunal members will also feel that chris has cost them 8 years of their lifes also :)

Well dome Jim in finding the Strathclyde stuff.

Steve, I think the stuff about linguistic skills; cultural attitudes to benefits and empathy are really interesting and there’s more than a grain of truth in it. I would like to see the phrase “co-production” come into play. An extension of “nothing about us, without us” if you like. Such phrases are admittedly in danger of becoming meaningless given their appropriation by marketing and PR types who think they’re doing something about poverty if they have a logo and a slogan but their original meaning should not be lost. I have no time for concepts like “client centred” etc.

If you want to be client centred then involve the client from day one. A service shaped by clients would look very different to what many of us front I suspect. Would there still be a mass exodus on a Friday afternoon? Would reps. still turn up for so-called informal tribunals in a suit and tie? Would we still only be interested in the views of those who use the service rather than those who do not?

Mike Hughes - 11 July 2017 01:39 PM

Well dome Jim in finding the Strathclyde stuff.

Steve, I think the stuff about linguistic skills; cultural attitudes to benefits and empathy are really interesting and there’s more than a grain of truth in it. I would like to see the phrase “co-production” come into play. An extension of “nothing about us, without us” if you like. Such phrases are admittedly in danger of becoming meaningless given their appropriation by marketing and PR types who think they’re doing something about poverty if they have a logo and a slogan but their original meaning should not be lost. I have no time for concepts like “client centred” etc.

If you want to be client centred then involve the client from day one. A service shaped by clients would look very different to what many of us front I suspect. Would there still be a mass exodus on a Friday afternoon? Would reps. still turn up for so-called informal tribunals in a suit and tie? Would we still only be interested in the views of those who use the service rather than those who do not?

 

and the difficulty is a 100 clients would all tell us they want 100 different things…thats before we get to our available resources.

one thing i have found interesting is that lots of clients want face to face appointments initially when a huge amount can be done over the phone (depending on the circs). ive often spoken to clients on the “i will just take some basic details first” then at the end of the call or following dwp contact etc you have actually solved the issue which saves them a visit to see you and you time.

mind you the removal of implicit consent will kill that one off.

All true. The key to co-production is educating people as to the possible and watching them rework it in ways you’d not thought of.

Mike Hughes - 11 July 2017 02:00 PM

All true. The key to co-production is educating people as to the possible and watching them rework it in ways you’d not thought of.

id be interested to see advice based examples of this.

i remember reading something very interesting in a book on a different topic. a project manager was tasked with increasing the number of black women attending for breast cancer check ups in the usa as stats showed this was an issue.

project tried a few different ways with no success then hit on one that worked.

they trained hairdressers on the benefits of the tests and got them to speak to customers about it. the fact they had a relationship with the hairdresser and felt comfortable in that environment apparently then led to a significant uptake.

find things like that really interesting.

Steering dangerously close to “nudge” nonsense there 😊

I have one example of benefits related co-production. Did a Pension Credit Myths leaflet, which grew from involvement with local reps of the PS and from various older peoples groups. We looked at what we thought the most important information we could get out there to pensioners was and we all agreed that conventional leaflets on who can claim; what it is etc. simply had little impact. We narrowed it down to trying to myth bust and each of us identified the key myths we felt inhibited claims to PC. Every list looked different with minimal overlap. Had about 28 as I recall. Used the overlaps as common ground and then worked our way through the rest until we had about 10 to work with. Then spent time working up the language. Absolutely fascinating to see both myself and PS challenged every step of the way about language. Stuff we thought was concise and precise in meaning was often dismissed and so on. 

Final product took much longer to produce than a leaflet that I could have banged out inside a month. Took closer to two years. Wasn’t welcomed by the high ups who just didn’t get it. “What took YOU so long?” etc. Started from an assumption that there’s only 1 way to do a leaflet and that’s have an “expert” do it.

The thing is, the final product took on a life of its own. Initial print run was about 500 but in the end it went through 1 reprint and was then taken on by other organisations as something they could endlessly keep doing (as we had steered away from things that time-limit like phone numbers or benefit rates). We’re about a decade down the line and I lost count at around 8,000 and still get periodic queries. I know I can direct them to staff on the ground who keep photocopied stocks etc.