Four children are left home alone for five days. Social services step in to move the kids out to live with their father. But there’s a problem: the council have found a flat for the newly formed family, but it is unfurnished. The dad lives on a low income and does not have the savings to buy five beds and mattresses, and all the other furniture that is needed. If the property isn’t adequately furnished, the children will have to be taken into care. (See case study here).
Situations like this exist up and down the country. In this case, the family were awarded a loan from the local welfare provision (LWP) scheme run by their local authority which allowed them to start again after this period of massive instability. But if they lived in a different part of the country their local provision might not have been as generous, or the local council simply may not have established a scheme at all. And with central government funding to councils for LWP currently under threat, support of this type is likely to be even more limited in the future.
This week, the government’s consultation on how LWP should be funded in 2015/16 is closing. The consultation provides three options which propose ending the DWP grant that has supported schemes to date, and a fourth open option where respondents can offer other views on how schemes could be funded. At Child Poverty Action Group, we are asking the government to put the needs of vulnerable people at the heart of decision making and maintain the annual DWP grant of £178 million that has funded these schemes to date.
In addition, we are asking that the current patchy provision be improved. There are some excellent schemes in parts of the country, but others have been hard to access, overly restrictive, or simply shut down. Like the Work and Pensions Committee, we want to see funding for these schemes ring-fenced. This would ensure councils disburse funds to the neediest, rather than using resources to fill one of the many other gaps in their rapidly shrinking budgets.
Since the formation of the social security system, there has been statutory provision which recognises that benefit levels are set at a rate that does not allow low-income households to make savings to manage one-off or unexpected costs. The need has existed for over 60 years and is not going to vanish now. Local welfare provision is a necessary part of our social security system – the safety net to our national safety net. Maintaining funding and ring-fencing is necessary to make sure that remains the case.
Without this funding, it is hard to imagine how low-income families will cope. Everyone needs beds and furniture for their children, but with benefits losing value and the cost of basics rising, the idea of being able to save for a rainy day is a pipe dream for many on low incomes. In the absence of LWP, they will have to turn to high cost credit, suffer acute stress, and experience ever more entrenched crises including increased risk of homelessness. As well as the misery this causes parents and their children, in the long run, it is likely to prove a false economy and generate additional costs for the state.
This is a mean and short-sighted cut. We’re pleased that through this consultation the government have provided an opportunity for a rethink. Steve Webb was the minister in charge of setting up these schemes; we need to build on this work, not put it at risk.
* Megan Jarvie is the London campaign co-ordinator of the Child Poverty Action Group
One Comment
The case studies in this report are a clear reminder of people in very real, desperate need.
The studies reveal that minimal expenditure (a few hundred pounds) can save much greater public expenditure down the line and prevent a great deal of human misery.
I recommend people read the case studies in the report. There are repeated examples of people who through no fault of their own have had no income for weeks whilst awaiting decisions by DWP or other authorities. I feel particularly for the man who did not have enough money to travel to hospital for his cancer treatment. The wheelchair bound, double incontinent woman who had been dependent on her elderly father for care hit a crisis when her father’s dementia got so bad that it meant that neither of them were being cared for. Are we really saying that such people should be left to get on with it by themselves, without help?
Link to report —
http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/London%20Councils/TrackingWelfareReformoneyearon.pdf
We are repeatedly told that our country can afford royal weddings and jubilees, that it can afford to rush off to spend millions on foreign wars. But apparently the government is saying the country cannot afford to spend a few hundred pounds on the desperate needs of individuals described in the case studies in this report.
Perhaps there is another side to this story? If so I would be interested to know what it is and how it can be justified.