Benefit Take-Up Campaign
Benefits take up is a key issue, with up to £50 billion in benefits going unclaimed nationally each year. All those attending the workshop agreed that a benefits take-up campaign would be a positive response to helping provide more income for some households in poverty. As Peter Kemp stated in his keynote speech, benefit take-up is a key ladder out of poverty for economically inactive households and older people. The essential ingredients in such a campaign would have to be:
recognition of the multi-lingual setting of Burngreave
recognition of the multi-cultural composition of Burngreave, and different household patterns
understandable and accessible and current information
identification of benefits that were known/or judged to be under-claimed in Burngreave
support with the application process
the existence or development of trust between the prospective claimant and the campaigner/advice giver
the knock-on effects of workloads of locally–based paid staff
the knock-on effects on claimant households for successful applications
Effective evaluation of how successful such a campaign had been.
Participants originally considered that pension credits should be the target of any campaign, relating to the older residents and particularly population groups of pensioners likely to under-claim. Subsequently in the workshop, there was a strong case to argue that working tax credits should be the initial focus, relating to the widespread low pay in Burngreave.
Those present realised that any successful take-up campaign would have to be truly multi-agency, a real partnership between paid workers, vol/com organisations and representatives of the population group that was the ‘target’ of the campaign. There was also a need for liaison with benefit providers (DWP), which could secure formal support while developing a campaign using locally-based workers, organisations and voices. There was a key role to those who have been ‘successful’ becoming ambassadors for future claimants.
It was proposed that the City Council Area Co-ordinator and Pitsmoor CAB would work with BNDfC to do further work to move this forward.
For more information about the benefit take up campaign, Phone Andy Shallice, SCC Area Co-ordinator – 2769134