Accessible Advice
The cost of transport, caring commitments or chronic ill health means that many people cannot easily access a city centre service.
Stoke CAB has always been committed to taking its services out into the communities it serves.
The most vulnerable people who need CAB’s help the most are often far more likely to get that advice if it is offered in familiar local premises.
For many years one of the city's poorest communities on the Bentilee estate has benefited from the presence of the Bentilee Bureau. Since February 2007 the CAB has been one of the many services offered at the Bentilee Neighbourhood Centre.
In 2008/9 2,700 enquirer contacts produced 3,500 new advice issues over 40% of which related to welfare benefits. People on the estate were helped to claim £900,000 worth of previously unclaimed benefits.
All the research on benefit take up suggests that money coming into local communities from benefit take up is spent in those communities, thus providing a welcome boost to one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city.
Residents on the estate were helped to deal with £3.5 million worth of debt as specialist debt advisers from the bureau’s debt team ran regular outreach sessions in the Neighbourhood Centre so that residents on this estate were not denied access to essential debt advice.
Other communities in other parts of the city benefited from outreach sessions run in the city’s Children’s Centres and in GP’s surgeries. In both cases locating sessions with these communities enabled us to reach people who would have struggled to travel into Hanley but who nonetheless had some of the most acute and serious needs for advice we have encountered.
We have also continued to run services directed to the local Asian and African Caribbean communities, often in partnership with local community groups within the Cobridge area and entered into a unique, ground breaking partnership with Townsend Residents Association who secured funding from Robbie Williams’ ‘Give it Sum’ fund to pay for their own
CAB outreach session.
“We were delighted that the Give it Sum fund recognised the needs in Townsend and were prepared to support this novel but highly effective partnership between a local residents association and a large voluntary organisation coming together to provide a much needed service in a community which is often overlooked,” said Health & Regeneration Manager Mary Tomkinson.
These four outreach projects between them dealt with 1556 client contacts producing over 2000 new advice issues. In common with other areas of bureau work the most frequent queries involved debt and benefits and across the four projects over a million pounds worth of unclaimed benefit was identified. Once again putting much needed money into the pockets of many of the city’s poorest residents.
Unfortunately the GPs project finished at the end of March after nine years and its future is subject of a review currently being carried out by the PCT.
The Children’s Centre project also finished at the end of June 2009 and we await news of possible re-commissioning.
“We firmly believe these services are absolutely essential if some of the most marginalised and deprived communities are not to suffer even further,” said Bureau Chief Executive Simon Harris. “We are firmly committed to working in partnership with other agencies to serve these communities and would urge commissioners to reinstate these services as soon as possible.”
Pictured: Bentilee Neighbourhood Office
'Rez's' Story
'Rez' is a British Citizen of Iranian origin who had been living and working in the city for some time. His wife and children came to join him two and a half years ago. At that time 'Rez' was working and earning enough to support himself but he realised supporting a family would be a struggle on his income. He visited the local Job Centre to ask what benefits he was entitled to.
He told us the Job Centre advised him that he would be unable to claim for his wife until she had been resident in the country for two years but he could claim Child Benefit in respect of the children, who were British Citizens, and Tax Credits. They advised that he leave his wife off the claim form when making a claim. He followed this advice and for two years he received what he believed to be his correct tax credit entitlement.
Once his wife had completed her two years residence he contacted the Tax Credit Office and reported the change in circumstance, stating he wished to add her to the claim. Subsequently he received a letter from the Tax Credit Office stating that as his original claim had made no mention of his wife he had not met his responsibilities and they required him to repay £23,000 in tax credits they said he was not entitled to.
At this point 'Rez' contacted Stoke CAB distraught both at the prospect of having to repay such a large sum of money and at a loss to know how he would be able to maintain his mortgage payments and other household essentials.
Having investigated his case it became clear that 'Rez' had been wrongly advised by the Job Centre and had actually received his correct entitlement.
We wrote to the Tax Credit Office explaining the circumstances and requesting they reconsider their decision to recover as it was the result of wrong advice from the Job Centre. We also advised Rez to contact his MP who agreed to take up the matter.
As a result of the representations from the Bureau and the MP the Director of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs intervened to overturn the original decision and contacted Rez to confirm that they would no longer be pursuing the matter. 'Rez’s' Tax Credits were then reinstated and he was sent an ex gratia payment of a £100 as compensation for the distress the whole matter had caused him.
“Its extraordinary that someone who acts in good faith on the advice given by a government department can suffer such draconian consequences of acting on that advice,” said Bureau Chief Executive Simon Harris. “It would have been a monumental injustice had 'Rez' lost his home in these circumstances. Tax Credits have made a very real difference to the incomes of the poorest people. However, they also have the scope to cause enormous distress and anxiety when the system fails as it clearly did in this case.”
