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Benefit Claimants Sounding Board
By Aaron Barbour | August 13, 2008
The Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) and Jobcentre Plus (JC+) should establish a permanent ‘Benefit Claimants Sounding Board’ or ‘Claimants Advisory Panel’ which would work directly with head office DWP / JC+ officials and Ministers to develop new strategies, policies, programmes and initiatives.
DWP / JC+ would have the opportunity, by working directly with their ‘customers’, to listen, learn and act, and so more fully meet the needs of the people they are there to support. As well as their strategic input on issues such as ESA roll out, conditionality for lone parent, skills, job retention and carer advancement, contracting out services, and the role of volunteering, they could help advise on improving existing services (delivery and policy); develop new programmes and pilots; add their thinking before green and white papers are written; and tap into networks that DWP / JC+ find ‘hard to reach’. The list goes on.
There are precedents. Currently the Department for Communities and Local Government has the National Community Forum (made up of local community activists) bringing the voice of communities into government; and the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform had a Small Business Council, and now has a Small Business Forum. There has been a lot of talk (and TV programmes) over the last decade of senior managers going ‘back to the floor’. DWP already has a programme by that name for senior civil servants.
Another quango, more bureaucracy you might argue? Not so. DWP / JC+ need an injection of fresh thinking if it is to reach its 80% employment, child poverty and lone parent, incapacity benefit targets. Who better to advise and support them by ‘unlocking the talent’ of benefit claimants themselves. Current DWP / JC+ policy makers are removed from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life on the ground. This ‘Sounding Board’ would bring that dimension very much to life. The proposed ‘Sounding Board’ would bring the voices and lived experiences of the 5.4 million benefit claimants through the doors of Westminster.
At Community Links it is our belief that people who experience a problem understand it best and therefore best placed to offer solutions - this is not just a line from the mission statement - its backed up with research and practical action from our everday innovators approach.
The important factors for the success of any of these ‘Sounding Boards’ are that they don’t become talking shops and that they retain their independence and integrity. So I suggest that the board would set its own work priorities and workload, (with paths for all claimants to feed into it), but it would work closely within current government agendas, and report directly to the Minister.
One model could be a board consisting of 12-18 members, openly recruited, for a three-year tenure, made up of people represented from across the range of benefits. Ex-claimants might want to be included for those types of benefits where people spend a shorter period of time (e.g. JSA). It could meet 4 times a year, with an annual residential, and working groups meeting more regularly. DWP could host the secretariat, and provide a small budget to pay for expenses and training of board members. And finally the Board would complement, not replace, other forms of DWP consultation.
As DWP moves to contracting out more services to voluntary and private sector providers at a time when the economy looks to be on a rocky road, this is a key time to establish a ‘Sounding Board’, and so empower benefit claimants.
What do you think? Want to join the board? Get in touch or leave a comment.
Topics: Benefits, Everyday Innovators, Innovation, Welfare |
We spent a week debating the way poverty is portrayed in the media, generating over 20 fascinating posts from a wide range of authors. 
September 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
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