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Recognising and rewarding success

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

European Year Against PovertyMost people recognise that award ceremonies – particularly in the third sector – are at least as much about showcasing a wide variety of excellent work as they are about rewarding one particular individual, project, or organisation. This is certainly the rationale behind the Tackling Poverty Awards that we’re launching today, in collaboration with our partner Church Action on Poverty. They aim to recognise and reward projects that successfully support working age people in poverty.

Alongside Community Links’ core purpose of providing first rate services to people in east London, we share what we learn with other organisations and policy-makers nationally. Since 1989 our Ideas Annuals have collected and published hundreds of examples of successful local projects from around the country. Our Chain Reaction Project continues the work of sharing good project ideas in an online forum.

Through our policy work we have a track record of influencing government and changing the systems and procedures adversely affecting the people we work with .

One of this year’s projects, part of the European Year of Tackling Poverty, is around poverty amongst people of working age. As well as a series of local listening campaigns held around the country, we’re launching the competition to gather together innovative examples of projects working with people experiencing poverty. We believe that people who experience a problem are the experts and often best placed to develop sustainable solutions. We want to provide a platform for people who know best what it is like to live in a struggling community to tell their own story and challenge the myths about how poverty is perceived.

Four projects will be given a video camera to keep, and the chance to make a film about their work. One will win the overall award at a ceremony in November. But as many longlisted projects as possible will be included in a publication celebrating the diversity and importance of work going on around the country. Work that is often localised and unreplicated, but could have a huge impact if copied elsewhere.

So if you know of or run a project that inspires you, please do consider submitting an application.

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Posted in Innovation, Voices from the Ground Up, Welfare, Working age poverty | No Comments »

The impact of the emergency budget on Newham

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Emergency Budget There has been so much macro-analysis of the emergency budget this week that we wanted to see how it will impact on local people in the London borough of Newham where we work. It’s difficult to analyse the changes as they are going to be introduced over the next few years, and we won’t see the detail until the 20th October when the Comprehensive Spending Review is published.

Newham has worked hard to get off the bottom of the league tables when it comes to multiple deprivation, but we have seen the consequences of the recession over the last two years as demand for our services has soared – those seeking debt advice have doubled, and those seeking employment support have tripled in last 18 months.

So here’s a snapshot of what these changes mean for local people in east London.

Benefits and Tax Credits

  • The three year freeze (should read ‘cut in real terms’) of Child Benefit will affect 41,035 families in Newham who receive Child Benefit (a total of 79,320 children), a powerful tool in the fight against child poverty. Newham has one of the youngest populations in the country so we will be affected disproportionately.
  • We welcome the increase of Child Tax Credit by an extra £150 per year. This will help the 38,600 Newham families who are currently in receipt of Child or Working Tax Credits (highest take-up in London) offset the cuts of their Child Benefit.
  • Even though the government cut the free schools initiative being trialled (very successfully) in Newham and other boroughs, we are heartened to hear of Newham Council’s commitment to continue with it anyway.
  • A total of 1,910 people (18.8% of those on JSA) have been claiming JSA for longer than 12 months in Newham, many of whom we help back into work through our very successful employment programmes. We recently submitted a paper to DWP proposing how the new Work Programme must be designed so that it doesn’t leave behind those who most need its support – read a copy here.
  • We are concerned about the Housing Benefit being withdrawn from people on Jobseekers Allowance after 12 months. Particularly if at this point they have to go on the compulsory Work Programme. It’s contradictory and may lead to a massive increase in homelessness, debt or cash-in-hand work.
  • Key out-of-work benefits are claimed by 30,440 residents   (18.3% of the local population). Through delivering an advice service to 9,000 people each year and our research and campaigning work we know that fundamental reform of the benefit system is an absolute imperative. So we were heartened to hear that changes are underway, including work incentives which we’ve been lobbying for. We look forward to working with DWP over the summer as it prepares a new Welfare Reform Bill.

Housing
Current LHA rates for Newham top out at £350 for a 5-bedroom house, so Newham residents won’t be affected by the cap.

Tax
We welcome the government following up on one of our policy recommendations to increase the personal tax allowance threshold. This latest increase to £7,475 will take about 10,500 local residents out of the tax system (15.8% of Newham’s working age population), putting more money into the pockets of those who need it most.

However the VAT increases will adversely affect those poorest in our society. The richest 10% spend £1 in every £25 of their income on VAT. The poorest 10% spend £1 in £7.

Jobs
Where are the jobs? The assumption in the budget is that the private sector will fill the deficit by providing more jobs. And that it will be easier for people on benefits to move into work. But again where are the jobs now?

  • In Newham there are 46 jobs for every 100 people of working age. Compared to 94 for London, and 83 nationally. In other words, people either don’t work, or have to travel outside the borough for work.
  • Nine JSA claimants are competing for each unfilled job vacancy in Newham, compared with a national average of 5:1. And there are 10,196 people are claiming JSA in Newham. That’s an awful lot of competition from just one of the 33 boroughs in London.
  • The types of work available to people in Newham are in the service sector (representing 89.9% of all jobs in the borough). Often insecure and temporary (32% are part time), low paid (21% get paid less than £7 an hour) and low skilled (24.2% fail to reach level 4 at Key Stage 2 – average of English and Maths).

Public Sector
Newham residents rely more heavily upon their public services than other more affluent areas. Some local services are already at bursting point as demand outstrips supply. When these are cut where will local people turn to?

  • 36% of jobs in Newham are in the public sector (top 10% in the country). Newham Council has already had to cut £30million (c.7%) from this year’s budget. However if we are to see departmental cuts of 25% over the course of this parliament and a council tax freeze, how may of these jobs will go in Newham? Public sector funding also supports a diverse voluntary sector, delivering a wide range of services. The prospect of 25% cuts is not good for those who work in the sector, or for those they support.

It’s early days to see how this budget will actually impact on local people in east London. But we do know that as belts have tightened in the past it has often been those with least that suffer most. Let’s hope this coalition government’s rhetoric of fairness and support for the most vulnerable actually plays out into reality.

The consultation process for the Comprehensive Spending Review should be launched today (24th June) and the timetable runs through to the autumn – so get involved, we will be.

Note: Current data sources have been used where possible, and can be provided upon request.

Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, General, Housing, Informal Economy, Welfare, Working age poverty, debt, employment | 2 Comments »

First thoughts on Frank Field’s review on poverty and life chances

Monday, June 7th, 2010

http://comlinks.beepweb.co.uk/linksuk/wp-content/images/FrankFieldMP.jpgWe were  pleased to hear the PM announce plans for a new review on poverty and life chances, led by Frank Field, and considering, amongst other aims how to develop services that “nurture children”.

He will:

  • examine the case for reforms to poverty measures, in particular for the inclusion of non-financial elements
  • generate a broader debate about the nature and extent of poverty in the UK
  • explore the effect of a child’s home environment
  • recommend potential action by government and other institutions to reduce poverty and enhance life chances for the least advantaged.

We will be blogging on other aspects of the review in the weeks ahead but note now Fields specific commitments to consider how grass roots groups can transform children’s lives, to learn from others and to producing an action programme.  He told the BBC: “I hope we will have a programme of action, …which the government can actually act on. ……I don’t think we need lots of brilliant new ideas, lots of people have done work, we now need to bring that together and shape it in a way which leads to action.”

With the right community interventions at an early stage we could be doing much more to enable all children to fulfil their potential.   We know some of what works. We do it everyday at Community Links across a network of more than 60 projects in East London and it isn’t rocket science.  Its warm and friendly places where young people can be safe and free to play and learn and grow. Its committed and empathetic staff  that children can trust and respect and it’s the deep value relationships that grow from reliable and constant understanding between service user and provider.

When we were reviewing the Council on Social Action’s unfinished business  before the election we suggested to party leaders  that  a national community support strategy for children and young people, rooted in such approaches,  should be a priority for the new government.  We advised that an effective independent  contribution to developing such a strategy would learn from the successful working process of the Council  and would combine advice and recommendations to government with  concurrent, cross sector action on the ground.  Above all it would seek to understand and, where appropriate, support and develop existing good practice.

The brief for the Field review is not quite the same and as yet we don’t know exactly how it will work but there are clearly many connections. We particularly welcome  the positive commitment to learning from what works and to generating a practical action programme.

We look forward to contributing to the learning and, especially, to the action.

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Posted in Child Poverty, Council on Social Action, Welfare, Working age poverty, debt | 2 Comments »

Welfare reform proposals get a mixed reaction from the most successful New Deal project in London

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

New Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reform announcements today (and his simultaneous Guardian charm offensive) get a mixed reaction from colleagues around Community Links who, amongst other things, run the most successful New Deal project – supporting long-term unemployed back into work – in London and the South East.

On the one hand, we’ve been calling for wholesale reform of the benefits system for many years, so it’s good to see him demanding it too. His recognition of the problem of work incentives in the benefit system – whereby people can end up worse off and less secure on taking a low-paid job – is welcome.

The benefits system needs to be designed so people can take stepping stones into well paid and secure work, rather than leaving them high and dry as soon as a temporary and low-paid job appears. Equally, it must be ready to pick them up again quickly if the job ends, both to prevent the cycle of debt that often begins in that few weeks between the last pay cheque and the first benefit cheque, and to give people the reassurance that taking the job in the first place won’t jeopardise their situation further down the line. Whether he can get these large and expensive reforms through the Treasury remains to be seen.

However, his continuing adherence to the idea of sanctions for ‘those who won’t work’ is worrying. We know that even the long-term unemployed want to work, but some face many and complex barriers – lack of training or education, lack of support at the Jobcentre, health or family problems. For some, it takes several cycles through our six month programme before they’re in a position to accept a job. Cutting their benefits after the first cycle will plunge them further into poverty and further from the job market, costing more, and stigmatising where government should be supporting.

Finally, the Work Programme model – whereby charities like ours (and private contractors) take on more of a role in supporting people into work – has good aspects, not least the ‘black box approach’ that would let us design bespoke programmes for individual jobseekers. Yet the signs are that, by making the contracts so big that only large multinational companies can apply, they will lose the unique contribution a charity like ours can make to supporting the long-term unemployed. The system will need to be carefully designed, and properly funded, to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Overall, much of the rhetoric – punishments and stigmatisation aside – sounds promising, but the detail is still not there. At the launch this morning Duncan Smith said he wanted to work with charities like ours to hammer out the detail over the next few months. If this is a genuine offer then we are very willing to help him shape the system so that it best serves the needs of the two thousand jobseekers we see every year, the tens of thousands in Newham, and the millions nationwide.

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Posted in Benefits, Informal Economy, Welfare, Working age poverty | 3 Comments »

Tackling Working Age Poverty

Friday, May 21st, 2010


by Gary Blake
Today is the end of my first week in post as Co-ordinator for the  Tackling Working Age Poverty project. Community Links, in partnership with Church Action on Poverty, are working on a national campaign to research and address working age poverty.

I hope over the coming months to listen to people’s views and hear your ideas on how we can make a difference for people experiencing working age poverty.

Yesterday DWP published the latest set of statistics revealing the extent of poverty in the UK.  Several commentators have analysed the figures including New Policy Institute co-founder Peter Kenway whose article in today’s Guardian reports that six in every 10 children in poverty now belong to a working household and in-work poverty has been a rising trend since the late 1970’s.

He says “Work that does not provide a sufficient income is now as much to blame for poverty than worklessness.”

We are taking a close look at working-age poverty over the coming year.  As part of this campaign we are organising listening events around the country. Now is an opportunity to see how serious the new government is about poverty reduction. If you want to get involved in our campaign, leave your comments below or send me an e-mail.

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Posted in Child Poverty, Working age poverty, employment | 1 Comment »

Developing an EU platform to address undeclared work

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Amsterdam, a city known for its permissive approach to life, was the venue for a fascinating two day meeting on undeclared work recently. We were invited as the only social partner following our research and campaigns on the informal economy. It was hosted by Regioplan, a research organisation based in the Netherlands, and attended by various bigwigs (mainly from governments) from western European countries, to assess the feasibility of developing an EU platform to address undeclared work.

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Posted in Informal Economy, Welfare, Working age poverty, employment | No Comments »

Guest post – welfare reform isn’t rocket science

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Jeff Mitchell is director of Clean Slate Training and Employment, supporting people back to work. Before the election he asked candidates from five parties about their plans for welfare reform, and wasn’t impressed with their answers. The challenges he outlines are ones the new government must start grappling with. This was first published on Jeff’s blog

I only had two asks: invest in workless people and deconstruct the benefits trap. I must have been speaking Japanese. There was no response to my points from any of the 5 candidates who took part in the event.

Is this rocket science?

Last year, Clean Slate opened a centre to help job seekers from one of Bristol’s most disadvantaged wards. I figured – and this betrays even my prejudices, and I’ve worked with unemployed people for the past 18 years – that we’d have to drag people in kicking and screaming. But even while we were still measuring up, with just the shop front in place advertising that we would be “Working With You Towards Employment”, people starting coming in looking for help finding work.

Once up and running, Sue, a woman who’d spent the previous 20 years raising a family told me she’d been on a Job Centre Plus programme for 13 weeks and still didn’t have a CV. She hadn’t even known what she wanted to do but once she’d sat down with a Clean Slate worker, she said, and talked about the skills she’d used in bringing up her children, she realised she’d make an excellent carer. Sue felt she’d done her time with kids but set about, there and then, looking for work caring for older people. Once she knew what she wanted to do, the CV followed quickly and it took only two sessions with our staff to leave with one fully completed.

By contrast, I’ve heard that the Department of Work and Pensions desribe unemployed people as “stock”. It’s easier to dehumanise people and treat them as a single entity when it comes to policy. But in Clean Slate’s experience, it’s the opposite that works on the ground.

Numerous job seekers have come to us complaining they’re sick of being assumed to be benefits cheats. They don’t blame the press, they don’t expect any better. But they do resent the fact that that’s how they’re made to feel by Job Centre staff. They feel demeaned, depressed and unworthy of any opportunities to get themselves off the breadline.

Clean Slate is not interested in being yet another sausage machine, churning people through a one size fits all system. Nor are we interested in skimming the cream, helping those needing least help, so we can grab the juiciest financial kick backs from Job Centre Plus. We believe the best hope for overcoming unemployment and worklessness starts and ends with each individual, so we start there. It’s far more rewarding when people like Sue, who have been deactivated by the unemployment system, get switched back on.

So, is it rocket science? Absolutely not. How we make this vital work pay is a harder question. Especially when those who are clamouring for our votes cannot comprehend how a personalised service can be delivered to a mass of 3 million people.

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Posted in Benefits, Welfare, Working age poverty | No Comments »

Pre-election karaoke

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Amid the din of election coverage, it’s nice to be reminded that most of the world is carrying on as normal – working, volunteering, even dancing. Today, for example, is Community Links’ annual pensioners’ tea dance and karaoke party, organised by a group of volunteers from one of our corporate supporters. The hubbub emanating from the hall, right in the middle of our office, is a nice if distracting reminder that the good society is being supported every day, and no doubt will continue whoever makes it in to government.

Something that might not make it through the election period, however, is our proposal for a Community Allowance, which has been sitting with DWP for months, and is in danger of disappearing completely. After the election, expect to hear much more about it, as we try and persuade whoever’s in government of its obvious merits.

Until then, however, it’s sobering to remember that for many of the pensioners downstairs, the people coming through our doors for advice, or the young people we support into work, the next few years are going to be pretty tough, irrespective of tomorrow’s result. The recession hits the people we work with hardest and longest, and it’ll take more than some karaoke to sort that out. Proposals like the Community Allowance, which rewards work that strengthens communities and supports people back into work, could be crucial.

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Posted in Benefits, Informal Economy, Volunteering, Welfare, Working age poverty | No Comments »

The Fairness Test – will leaders sign up to an equality impact assessment?

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Community Links has joined a group of other charities today in calling for the main party leaders to commit to a Fairness Test, to ensure the poorest in society do not shoulder the burden of reducing our national debt.

The test, which is supported by organisations including the Child Poverty Action Group, Barnardo’s, Save the Children, and the Equality Trust, would ensure that major tax or spending changes are rigorously assessed for their impact on inequality. Carried out by the Treasury, the Inequality Impact Assessment would mean that governments cannot make major changes without being aware of the consequences for inequality and the knock-on effects on the cohesiveness and wellbeing of the whole society.

At Community Links we are all to aware that even small cuts in seemingly-small budgets can have dramatic effects. For example, we provide welfare and benefits advice to over 12,000 people every year – a vital service that last year ensured they received an extra £1.3m they were entitled to. Cuts to services like these might go unnoticed next to much larger spending decisions, but would be devastating to the people we work with. An inequality impact assessment would help safeguard vital services like these.

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Posted in General, News, Working age poverty | No Comments »

DWP’s mixed messages on benefits

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Following on from our earlier post on benefit fraud, it’s worth noting an interesting debate on the subject in the Lords last week. In 2009 James Purnell’s Welfare Reform Bill was passed and in it was the controversial ‘one strike and you’re out’ amendment; section 24 of the new Act. After the first caution or administrative penalty, let alone conviction, a claimant will have their benefits stopped for a four week period. If this happens twice (two strikes) in a five year period their benefits will be stopped for thirteen weeks.

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Posted in Benefits, Informal Economy, Welfare, Working age poverty, employment | 1 Comment »

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