Policy Research Assistant:Blended between office and home (England and Wales)

🚨 We're hiring a Policy Research Assistant in the Families, Welfare and Work team at Citizens Advice🚨

Come and help us make the benefits system fairer (and work with lots of lovely people)!

Deadline to apply is 21st August: www.jobtrain.co.uk/citizensadvi...

📢New briefing with @drsarahhadfield.bsky.social published today - looking at how UC’s rigid monthly model is often at odds with recipients’ working lives, and how + why the UC review could be a chance to fix this ⬇️

UK launches review into state pension age Move announced as government also appoints commission to look at boosting retirement savings

Raising state pension age is a surefire way of increasing spend on disability benefits
www.ft.com/content/1b30...

The narrative around Universal Credit has long centred around work incentives.

This new briefing examines how effective UC is at encouraging employment – and how that focus may have overshadowed the deeper complexities of getting into work. 🧵

🔗 www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publi...

🚨 New report alert 🚨

We’ve launched our first local deep dive research into health inequalities - starting in Chapeltown, Leeds.

What does geography have to do with health & work? Quite a lot, it turns out. 🧵

The government's concessions on disability benefits cuts are a good start but do nothing to help those who will need disability benefits in the future. Anyone can become disabled at any time and future claimants are no less deserving of support than existing claimants

Changes to UCPIP bill are result of campaigners & disabled people speaking out about the profound harm the govt was about to inflict.

However, the bill remains illogical & inherently unfair.

The govt should pause & come back with meaningful reform if serious about “fixing the foundations”.

Anita’s story How cuts to disability benefits could impact millions

How will the proposed disability benefit cuts impact disabled people? Today we’re sharing the story of one of the people we’ve helped: Anita*.

The cuts could mean she loses over £8k per year (43% of her income)❗

New blog out now: medium.com/p/1ab8959922a1

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill - On Tuesday 1st July, MPs will be asked to vote on the UC & PIP Bill, which contains the biggest cuts to social security in a decade. This briefing from ten organisations including Scope, Citizens Advi...

Heartened to see these charities working together to oppose the UC and PIP bill - www.ucpipbill.co.uk

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill - On Tuesday 1st July, MPs will be asked to vote on the UC & PIP Bill, which contains the biggest cuts to social security in a decade. This briefing from ten organisations including Scope, Citizens Advi...

UC & PIP bill proposes the biggest cuts to disability benefits since OBR was created. It would:
✂️cut benefits for 3.2m disabled ppl
📈Push 300,000-400,000 into poverty, including 50,000 children
📈 Drive 440,000 into severe hardship

New joint briefing: www.ucpipbill.co.uk

Image shows a graphic of a line chart trending upwards and the Citizens Advice logo, with the following text: Citizens Advice Data Insights Spotlight on Disability We'll examine how proposed disability cuts are expected to pull hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty 26 June, 2pm to 3.15pm #CADataInsights

The new welfare bill could cut billions from health & disability benefits, putting hundreds of thousands of disabled people at risk of poverty.

Join @citizensadvice.bsky.social on 26 June to hear from a panel of experts and explore our data ⤵️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/citizens-a... #CADataInsights

Why we’re asking MPs to vote against the bill to cut disability benefits Today, the government laid its Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill before parliament. It details plans to cut billions…

Today, the government laid its Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill before parliament. But what's actually in the bill and what happens next?

New blog out now: wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/why-were-ask...

Join @citizensadvice.bsky.social on Thursday 26th June for our next data insights event - with a spotlight on disability

We'll be discussing the disability benefit cuts with a range of experts

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/citizens-a...

We've called for a national framework for crisis support, ensuring there's a consistent minimum standard of support wherever you live - reaping the rewards of a local approach with less risk of postcode lottery.

The new Fund could be a chance to build in key principles of effective crisis support ⬇️

Need to see more on how the Fund balances Discretionary Housing Payments, "traditional" crisis support (eg cash for individuals), holiday FSMs, + preventative support. Also waiting to see the balance between national guidance and local flexibility

£842m also continues the 12% cash terms cut to crisis support from the autumn budget, when £ for Discretionary Housing Payments was announced w/ HSF. Seems holiday Free School Meals will still be delivered through the Fund, which'll squeeze the crisis pot, especially given (v welcome) expanded FSMs

£842m/yr for the new 'Crisis and Resilience Fund' in England - fund likely to get more stretched over time if funding is frozen in cash terms. Rationed funds and applications closing early was already a problem for the people we helped with HSF + meant support wasn't always there when needed

V. positive Spending Review has confirmed multi-year funding for crisis support. Good to see move towards crisis support being a permanent part of welfare support, and away from the short-term Household Support Fund approach -
But still some questions about how the new fund will work in practice

The Household Support Fund is now the 'Crisis and Resilience Fund' and will be funded at £1 bn/yr (incl. Barnett) until the end of 2028-29. The first multi-year funding will be very helpful for local authorities delivering the scheme as they can now plan, develop their approach, retain staff etc.

Spot on from Polly Toynbee. For more on the @citizensadvice.bsky.social analysis cited, check out Maddy's thread bsky.app/profile/madd...

Its time for change in Jobcentres, but how do we do it? My new paper proposes a vision for Jobcentre reform. The central idea is to introduce case workers, who would be service users’ main point of contact and offer ongoing pastoral and practical support 🧵
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publi...

A 15% deduction cap still means still means losing more income than you can afford. Couples could still see £1100+ a year deducted from their UC.

Plus, 94% of UC households w/ deductions are repaying some govt debt. Really addressing deductions means fixing the causes of these govt debts.

A fair first step The Fair Repayment Rate — and what’s left to do to tackle the hardship caused by Universal Credit deductions

New blog on the Fair Repayment Rate, in effect since 30 April.

It's lowered deductions + raised UC incomes for many - BUT must be the first, not the only, step govt. takes to tackling deductions.

⚠️ We now need action on the causes of deductions, crucially the 5 week wait.

The Pathways to Work Green Paper sets out plans to cut billions from health and disability benefits.

Instead of getting people into work, these cuts will push hundreds of thousands into poverty.

Our new report looks at the impact of cuts to PIP, UC health & scrapping the WCA (🧵)

Chart showing Proportion of Household Support Fund expenditure by type of support and HSF wave: England, 2022-23 to 2023-24.

Free School Meals support in the holidays is now the largest category of Household Support Fund expenditure.

This is arguably not an ideal use of what is supposed to be crisis support funding and would be better covered by an increased Free School Meals budget instead.

Yes - important that today's U-turn doesn't mean that we lose sight of the 3.2m working-age families who will be affected by cuts to PIP and Universal Credit, with some losing more than £4,500 per year.

Work won’t cut it

New briefing for @citizensadvice.bsky.social by me and @beccastacey.bsky.social

We look at whether people losing PIP and UC income will be better off *if* they move into employment, if reforms were implemented today

Here's a quick 🧵 but spoiler alert: probably not

Earning more, but worse off If the government is serious about tackling child poverty, fixing free school meals has to be on the menu

Great new blog from our policy research intern Josh King explaining how it's become harder and harder for low income families to access Free School Meals.

The £7,400 earnings threshold (frozen since 2018 !) is a cliff-edge that keeps getting closer 👇

Universal credit claimants left £490m in debt due to DWP overpayment errors Official errors led to over 680,000 universal credit overpayments in 2023/24

Deductions are leaving people with less income than they need to make ends meet and pushing them into debt.

The benefits system should be there to support people, not force them into hardship

Read more:

inews.co.uk/news/univers...