A tenant support worker employed by a charity says benefit reforms are causing unnecessary suffering.
“I work for a charity as a ‘referral assessment and intervention floating support worker’, meaning that I lead on providing support to people with vulnerabilities such as mental or physical ill health, habitual substance abuse, or problems with domestic violence. The charity is commissioned by a local authority to provide general support to people between the ages of 16 and 54 who have a social housing tenancy, so our work helps minimise disruption for other tenants, eviction costs, and the load on public services dealing with issues such as health and crime.
Providing a good service means putting the time in to help people handle, for example, eviction notices, benefit assessments and tribunals. But managers involved in the tendering process have told me that contracts for services like ours are increasingly awarded on the basis of price rather than quality – meaning that they’re likely to be less effective.
My role involves dealing with referrals, determining who is eligible for our tenancy support, and referring some on to other more appropriate statutory or non-statutory agencies. The majority of referrals come from council housing departments, social services, medical professionals, and self-referrals from people who wish to access our service. Often, social workers may refer to us people who don’t meet their criteria but are still in need of support.
Like many other bodies providing a public service, our charity has seen big cuts in recent years. However, we’re still doing a lot of work to support people back into education, training and employment; and from what I’ve seen of the Work Programme, it’s putting far too much pressure on people for whom being pushed back into work is detrimental – especially those who suffer from mental illness. I frequently support people attending medical assessments for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), and often find that those carrying out the assessments have little or no knowledge in the area of disability or illness which they’re testing. I believe the assessments are ineffective, and unfairly penalise those with mental health issues.
We support individuals to appeal incorrect decisions at tribunals by pointing out the reality of their situations. Tribunals for ESA – and, in particular, Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – appeals are now taking up to a year, and the tribunal service is swamped as a result of incorrect decisions being made by assessors.
The introduction of Universal Credit is another major policy that I have concerns about. Although simplification of the benefits system is a desirable aim, I find the rhetoric around ‘making work pay’ misleading. In nearly every case when I have sat down with a client and done a comprehensive benefits calculation, the client is already on less money than he or she would be receiving if they were in employment and receiving minimum wage.
In the last six months, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of people who are struggling to feed themselves. We are relying increasingly on food banks. Under Universal Credit, the proposal is to move to monthly benefit payments. This may help people to budget and manage their money in a way more suited to the world of work – but it may also increase the pressure on food banks, if people can’t save enough money to last the month.
There are also many discrepancies within the welfare system. I know of one case where a man worked with a particular JobCentre adviser and took all the necessary steps to meet his Job Seekers Agreement. However, on one occasion when he visited the JobCentre and spoke to a different adviser, he was deemed not to have taken the necessary steps to look for work. As a result his benefit was stopped for two weeks, and he had no access to a crisis loan or hardship payment from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). It’s this sort of inconsistency that makes my job difficult when advising vulnerable clients.
I recently arranged for a member of staff from the DWP to talk to us about the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which is replacing DLA. This person was only able to answer our questions when they related directly to PIP and the assessments. I thought this characteristic – for it sometimes seems that higher up within the department, people are lacking the bigger picture as they focus on their particular areas. It would be helpful if those implementing reforms had a more general knowledge of all of the challenges in this area.”