Fighting poverty

Social justice cannot exist in a society experiencing high levels of poverty or in a society with significant inequalities of wealth.

Much of our work involves helping those on the lowest incomes enforce their legal right to benefit. This has become increasingly challenging in an atmosphere which questions the sustainability of the welfare benefits system, increases the complexity and bureaucracy associated with claiming benefits and now seeks significant reductions in the amount spent on benefits.

In the last year we have identified £4.9 million worth of unclaimed benefit. These are benefits that people are entitled to but not claiming and are government money that is due to the area.

All the research around benefit take-up demonstrates very clearly the money raised in this way is spent in local shops and businesses, benefitting the local area.

In Stoke on Trent sickness and disability is a major factor preventing many people from working. Consequently, much of our benefits advice this year has been focused on helping people obtain and keep sickness benefits.

The introduction of Employment and Support Allowance has brought with it huge demand for advice as many more people than expected have failed its rigorous test of disability. As existing incapacity benefit claimants are transferred to employment and support allowance this trend will only continue.

Funding from the Big Lottery's advice plus programme strengthened our benefits team by allowing us to recruit an extra specialist case worker. We are also working closely with Age UK North Staffs, and Disability Solutions to make specialist benefits advice more accessible, improve the training to staff in a variety of agencies across North Staffordshire and improve the co-ordination of benefits advice by improving referrals and partnership working.

So far Stoke CAB was able to provide casework to 150 extra people through this project.

The quality of work capability assessments conducted for Employment Support Allowance has raised concerns not just in Stoke-on-Trent but across the country. Nationally, Citizens Advice has been monitoring bureau enquirers' experiences and collecting evidence to influence the roll out of this new benefit.

In Stoke-on-Trent we have been talking to our enquirers about their experiences and feeding them back to the DWP locally and into national debates.

Research carried out by Stoke CAB case workers suggests that the full roll out of Employment Support Allowance could cost the City £13,000,000 a year, assuming that half of the City's 18,000 incapacity benefits claimants fail to transfer to ESA, and that the average benefit loss is £28 a week.