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Social Fund localisation
There is also the question of impartiality. How will the CAB advise client’s regarding disputes about grants that are administered by itself?
Yes and a disputes procedure is going to be costly to administer.
A lot of this might be academic. Unless the budget is ring fenced, or preventative structural arrangements are made, the money will simply be swallowed up to help plug the local authority’s huge budget deficit.
Well we shall see.
What we are seeing is the localisation of relief.
There are some interesting historical precedents of what can happen when one area offers relief and another does not.
Still it might not be clear as we think.
If you are a Local Authority, would you want some new council tenants to start.. say with no furniture and white goods? Would you want no throughput from expensive hostels, as there are no rent in advance loans/ ETC.
These sort of loans/grants were probaby helping to stop folks approaching expensive statutory services for help…..... eg Social Care services.
“Good morning, I’d like a loan please”
“Will you able to pay it back”?
“Oh yes, this is the amount of benefit I get”
“Ah; I’ve some bad news about that. Have you heard about welfare reform”.
“Oh, I’m not sure you have a recent local connection. Did you know that we operate the Speenhamland system of poor relief in this area”.
Well its gonna be tough.
The LA is presumably going to want to prioritise local folk.
There are going to be applications from applicants new to area, and for good reason, eg DV.
So presumably that sort of exception will need to be built in?
There is also the question of impartiality. How will the CAB advise client’s regarding disputes about grants that are administered by itself?
A staff member from our bureau sits on the local DHP panel, along with a couple of other outside agencies. It is possible that a similar set-up will be done for the local social fund decision-making. Our staff member recuses themselves from voting on cases where they had a previous involvement via the bureau. We probably wouldn’t want to be involved any more than that in the running of a grant/loan scheme.
Some bureaux might have a food bank for needy clients, but I think it is generally informal and not advertised. Pushing that as a service I think would change too much the nature of what we do and how we are perceived.
That is a really interesting idea.
In fact you could just extend the remit of your DHP panel and that would avoid duplication.
You could synnchronise your rent in advance, depossit and DHP schemes.
Nice one.
is it right that an advice agency is involved in this sort of decision making?
Suppose someone who had applied subsequently approached the agency for help with the issue? What about the perception that the agency is not independent of the local authority? Or the perception that clients of the agency might get better treatment when they apply?
It was for such reasons that the advice sector took a very firm line of non-cooperation with the DWP over the social fund back in 1988 (at the time, they had wanted involvement in aspects of decision making and delivery).
In my view, the reasons are just as valid today - if not more so, given the weakening of claimants’ legal rights.
Its an interesting point.
I think that its got to be something for CABs to decide.
I would see it as a way of getting somebody coming at this with a different angle/experinces on board, who could help ensure the money go to where it is needed most.
My own position (still not really worked out) is that I was really against transfering this function.
However, given the money is not ring fenced, I would now prefer to see the case made for the money to be spent on a city wide crisis/garnt welfare saefty net, rather than lets say pot-holes (hey thats important too!).
Unless you get on board others you will really just be swapping one top down model (DWP) for another.(LA)
That isnt localism
There’s a huge difference between getting involved in the design of schemes and being involved in making decisions on applications. The former is very much to be encouraged as it is part of social policy work (albeit without endorsing a bad scheme), the latter is not what welfare rights advocates should be doing.
I think there is a risk of the sort of problems you mentioned, certainly. Our welfare rights workers - i.e. me - are not involved in any decision-making, but the bureau as an agency is involved, and yes, I can see how this might lead to a perception of lack of independence. Set against that are the benefits of CAB input on responsible decision-making. I’d have thought LAs who run their own welfare rights service have to deal with similar issues.
I seem to have unintentionally opened a can of worms here. I obviously didn’t make myself clear in my initial post. I was referring to what what chrisatkcc said in para 2 of his original post, namely that “there should be a variety of help available in addition to what the applicant presents with - eg if they need to get a new cooker - as well as dealing with the cooker, are they getting all the benefits they are entitled to, do they need debt advice, do they need help with social care, employment advice, help with domestic violence etc “ . I was only thinking of CAB involvement in the advice aspect, through signposting to us, hence my comment about reinventing the wheel.
There’s a huge difference between getting involved in the design of schemes and being involved in making decisions on applications. The former is very much to be encouraged as it is part of social policy work (albeit without endorsing a bad scheme), the latter is not what welfare rights advocates should be doing.
Fair enough.. a rights based approach. (we are on Rightsnet)
However this is not going to be a right…....
I suspect you might be surprised… will LAS see this as a means tested benefit that requires an application and decision by them along the lines of the current system?
They have not the IT od Staff to do this.
So it is a community response?
I’ve heard that there is an organisation (I’m not sure who) offering to do the whole thing as an outsourced operation. Has anyone come across this?