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“No matter which way you turn they have actually got you”: Universal Credit, conditionality and discretion
For your delight and delectation (and disgust?)
With thanks to Owen Stevens and colleagues at Greenwich Welfare Rights whose expert research on safeguarding, a regular feature on rightsnet, is referenced.
I’ve experienced the exact same issues amongst various UC areas. Whilst I’m obviously not happy about these extremely differing approaches, the article is very well considered and highlights a major issue that I’ve termed the UC postcode lottery. Thanks for sharing Sarah.
Thank you for this.
I think we will be seeing more of this as UC trundles on. These pages have carried many comments about the rise of discretion, and, without disrepect to Jobcentre staff, I cannot see how they will manage, supposedly trained and able to advise all sorts of people in all sorts of different situations, as the numbers on UC rise.
Surely, as well as the potential harm to claimants, JC+ staff face potential burn-out at having too large and too complex a workload?
We are already dealing with cases of people with serious disabilities for whom the ‘digital by default’ concept is just not working, people who can neither make nor maintain an online claim, and when we ask DWP what they can do, in spite of hard work by DWP staff in individual cases, answer comes there none on a wider policy basis. It would appear that the upper echelons of DWP just have not thought about it.
UC has been rolled out with an outright disregard for claimants, a ‘Happy Land’ approach of blanket optimism and a dismissal of facts and evidence where these are inconvenient and go against the claims of brilliant success and ‘transformative’ this-and-that.
Thanks too!
Really helpful!