Welfare Assistance Schemes

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro for securing this debate, which gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to his commitment to social justice issues and those in need, and also to thank him for his leadership, together with Frank Field, of the all-party parliamentary inquiry into hunger. He and I travelled to Birkenhead and South Shields together to listen to local evidence and I was particularly sorry to miss the inquiry session which he helped to organise in Looe, as I know that great work, much of it done by local churches, is taking place in Cornwall.

I would like to start by quoting from the right reverend Prelate’s introduction to the inquiry’s report published in December last year in which he acknowledged that these are complex issues. For those who have not read the report and his thoughtful comments, I take this opportunity to recommend it. He wrote:

“We are living at a time of difficult financial circumstances. The Government has to make hard choices with limited resources”.

He went on to set the increasing need for food banks in the context of,

“a deeper problem in our society; the ‘glue’ that used to be there is no longer there in many instances”.

But this social glue is precisely what localising welfare assistance can help to create and nurture and he and I have seen many great examples of it. It is vital that national government continue to fund local authorities to deliver effective schemes. Indeed one recommendation of the inquiry’s report was that the Government should continue to protect local welfare assistance funding and not allow it to be wholly incorporated into the local government finance settlement.

Everyone in this Chamber today knows how much pressure every local authority is under and we were concerned that assistance for vulnerable working-age adults and financially needy families would fall by the wayside if forced to compete with statutory duties. Like the right reverend Prelate, I welcome the fact that the DCLG has earmarked £74 million in response. The inquiry also recommended that DCLG monitor take-up rates for local welfare assistance within each local authority and work with those where registration is inexplicably low. Eighty per cent of authorities are not spending the whole of the allocated funds. Where this is due to potential applicants’ low awareness of availability, a range of agencies, including Jobcentre Plus, must ensure that those who need it are finding their way to accessing it. Yet the focus cannot simply be on meeting need with cash. Where severe financial need is partly due to inability to access and progress in work, serious personal debt, drug or alcohol problems, domestic abuse or other profound relationship problems—all of which can be a driver and effect of mental illness—these root causes must also be addressed.

I want to focus my remarks on a couple of the many local welfare assistance schemes that are doing just that and I wish time allowed me to acknowledge more of the organisations working in this field. The individuals delivering them are, if I may say, evidence that social glue, which can perhaps be defined as love for fellow human beings, is by no means absent. Indeed it is flourishing where the state is acknowledging that the human-scale, whole-person approach on which many local grassroots organisations operate will very often be more effective than top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches. The DCLG could help to increase the effectiveness of its funding by showcasing superb practice, as I am about to do, by drawing on examples which we heard about during the inquiry into hunger.

The Matthew Tree Project in Bristol is so much more than a simple food bank in terms of its early intervention and prevention approach. Its 400 volunteers offer advice, support and love—that word again—to help people develop skills to make life healthy and sustainable. For some that means becoming work-ready while others need help with budgeting and other advice. A couple of weeks ago a group of us, including the Members of Parliament for Birkenhead and for South Shields, visited in West Norwood the first community shop to be up and running on the lines of a social supermarket model. It is an entirely replicable, self-funding social enterprise. We came away inspired and enthused and I would encourage other noble Lords to visit and see for themselves.

I could spend the whole of my time today talking about it, but will save that for another day because I also want to mention the Centre for Social Justice Alliance of over 300 grass-roots charities working at the coalface of poverty as another source of inspiring good practice. Furniture Now in Brighton is an innovative community waste, reuse and training charity which recycles unwanted furniture and white goods and sells them on either at very low prices to homeless families, others in sudden crisis and those receiving benefits or to other customers who pay a full second-hand cost. The organisation provides free training and employment skills for those who are not in education, employment or training, have mental health difficulties, or have struggled with drug and alcohol dependency. All of its more than 60 volunteers are from vulnerable groups—those with mild learning difficulties, those in drug, alcohol, mental health or domestic abuse recovery and ex-offenders—enabling them to contribute meaningfully to society.

These welfare society foot soldiers are, however, rarely funded by local welfare assistance money and it is important to consider if and why they are missing out in local authority commissioning practices. In a survey, 91% of the CSJ Alliance said they did not feel there was a level playing field for small organisations providing public services and two-thirds were not consulted by local government about the design of services relevant to their work. It is to be hoped that the current review by the noble Lord, Lord Young, of the Public Services (Social Value) Act for the Government will consider whether those best equipped to help people transform their lives and circumstances are getting a fair crack of the whip when it comes to commissioning.