Award wins, UC data progress, new calculator designs and more

In this issue

We are finalists in the Digital Leaders Impact Awards 2021
Walsall Council wins the Data for Good Initiative of the Year award
DWP is listening to council’s calls for more Universal Credit data
Our Benefit and Budgeting Calculator gets a new design
Early feedback on Breathing Space implementation
New analysis shows the cost of expanding Free School Meals in Wales
Policy in Practice joins the Institute of Employability Professionals
People news: hello to Tobias and Sophia, and latest vacancies
Future free webinars
ICYMI: May’s blogs

We are finalists in the Digital Leaders Impact Awards 2021

We are delighted to announce that Deven Ghelani, Founder and Director of Policy in Practice, has been shortlisted for Tech for Good Entrepreneur of the Year Award in this year’s Digital Leaders Impact Awards.

The competition is very tough; Deven is one of three finalists from almost 350 submissions. He joins the founders of Tech Pixies and Beam and who are also doing important innovative work in their fields. We wish everyone the best of luck for the finals on the 18 June.

Deven said, “I founded Policy in Practice to make a difference to people’s lives by making the overly complex benefits system easier to understand. Together with the amazing team I’ve built I’m proud of the impact we’re having directly and indirectly with the work we’re doing. Being nominated for an award in recognition of this is humbling, we’ve so much more to do.”

Please show your support for Deven by voting for him in the People’s Choice Awards

Walsall Council wins the Data for Good Initiative of the Year award

We are thrilled that Walsall Council has won the Data for Good Initiative of the Year Award at this year’s British Data Awards for the new Multi-Agency Safeguarding Tracker (MAST) platform.

MAST has been developed by Policy in Practice to help any organisation with a safeguarding responsibility to improve communication and decision making..

MAST is one of three Social Care Digital Innovation Accelerator (SCDIA) 2020/21 projects. Run by CC2i and Policy in Practice for the LGA, it has match funding from NHS Digital. Data has been matched from Walsall Council: Adult Social Care, Children's Social Care, Public Health; Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust; West Midlands Police; West Midlands Fire and Rescue.

"Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council won ‘Data for Good Initiative of the Year’ and this category attracted the most entries overall. Their innovative use of administrative datasets to help better protect vulnerable people, while also saving time and money, received the highest score from the judges."

Deven Ghelani and Paul Withers, Data Protection Officer at Walsall Council, are speaking at the Digital Leaders Week on Monday 14 June about how MAST helps boost safeguarding through multi-agency data sharing.

Register to hear Deven and Paul talk about MAST at Digital Leaders Week

DWP is listening to council’s calls for more Universal Credit data

We held our latest Universal Credit Roundtable on 13 May with a group of leading local authorities and stakeholders to progress our work to secure the release of more Universal Credit data.

As a direct result of campaigning from a coalition of committed local authorities, DWP announced that they will provide local authorities with two new monthly data shares to support the COVID Local Support Grant. This welcome development shows that DWP has the ability to provide Universal Credit data for a specified purpose, and more importantly that the DWP is prepared to provide Universal Credit data for a purpose other than Council Tax Reduction.

Wider use of Universal Credit data will help all local authorities improve connections across their services and allow timely support to be better targeted to those who need it most. Without the sharing of Universal Credit data, early and proactive prevention work will become near impossible for local authorities as Housing Benefit data becomes more obsolete.

Policy in Practice holds regular roundtable meetings with local authorities and other stakeholders to discuss issues relating to Universal Credit data.

To join this group please email hello@policyinpractice.co.uk

Our Benefit and Budgeting Calculator gets a new design

Thanks to recent funding from Nesta’s Rapid Recovery Challenge competition we have made huge improvements to the design of our Benefit and Budgeting Calculator. The updates we’ll be introducing shortly will give users a better experience, on both mobile devices and computers. These changes will go live in June 2021

As part of our comprehensive redesign we conducted a number of research groups to ensure we have the end user’s needs at the heart of our product. We are particularly grateful to Open Inclusion, a company that runs user research sessions with people living with disabilities, who have helped us design our calculator to be as accessible and user friendly as possible.

Ask to be notified of the calculator redesign

Early feedback on Breathing Space implementation

Breathing Space came into force on 4 May 2021 to give people in problem debt a sixty day period to get back on their feet.

The new policy will freeze interest, fees and enforcement for people in problem debt, with further protections for those in mental health crisis treatment. It will see enforcement action from creditors halted and interest frozen for people with problem debt.

We know that tackling debt early is better for higher recoveries, and better for people’s mental health and wellbeing. Nearly 2 in 5 people who’ve been affected by mental health problems have had a drop in income due to the pandemic, so the new rules are timely.

In this month’s free webinar, What we all need to know about implementing Breathing Space, we heard from the Financial Wellness Group, who offer free customer debt management solutions, about their early experiences of implementing Breathing Space.

Listen back to learn:

The debt context: how Covid has affected the nation’s financial resilience
The need for Breathing Space
What is Breathing Space?
Early feedback on Breathing Space implementation

Listen back and view slides

New analysis shows the cost of expanding Free School Meals in Wales

We were recently commissioned by the Bevan Foundation and the Wales Anti-Poverty Coalition to evaluate the financial cost of extending Free School Meals to all families in receipt of Universal Credit.

Our data lead analysis found that

Extending provision to children in all Universal Credit households would increase the total cost by £10.5 million per year, from £38.9 million to £49.5 million
This would allow 99% of families on low-income with children aged between 4-16 to be eligible for Free School Meals, an improvement of 21% from 78%
Newly eligible households would save an average of £1,280 per year, or £764 per child per year, based on a CPI-adjusted value of £3.90 per meal

This would mean savings to families in Wales of £20.9 million per year if all eligible households take up Free School Meals, or would range between £16.9 million and £18.4 million if take-up rates were 81% and 88% respectively.

Policy recommendations may need to consider that, although 99% of children from low-income households would be eligible for Free School Meals under our extended scenario, extra effort may be needed to encourage takeup.

Read the full report

Policy in Practice joins the Institute of Employability Professionals

We are proud to announce that we have joined The Institute of Employability Professionals (IEP) as corporate affiliate partners. The IEP is the only professional membership institute for the employability profession and supports the people who support others gain work, progress in work and retain work.

The corporate affiliation gives us the ability to join the conversation with key influencers in the employability sector.

Deven Ghelani said, “It is right that DWP has responded to the employment challenges Covid has brought with a substantial investment in employment support. The plan for jobs has a lot to deliver and I am confident that Policy in Practice can play its part in helping people into work.”

Policy in Practice has much to share with employability professionals. Our services can be used to show job seekers and job movers how their income will change as their employment, universal credit and benefits changes, and outline what extra help they may be entitled to with, for example, low-cost utility tariffs and council tax support.

Visit the Institute of Employability Professionals

Future free webinars
All our webinars are free and run from 10.30 to 11.45

How housing providers can boost the income of tenants
Wednesday 23 June. Details and register here

One in three households have lost income because of Covid-19 and over 7 million UK adults are behind on their household bills. The drop in the nation’s financial resilience, together with the end of the eviction ban, means that housing providers are braced for higher demand for support.

Yet we know that over £10 billion of benefits are unclaimed by working-age households each year.

In this webinar we will showcase the work of two housing providers, Grwp Cynefin and Rooftop Housing, who have each secured millions of pounds worth of increases in income for their tenants, boosting their financial resilience and improving their quality of life.

Join this webinar to learn:

Which benefits were most underclaimed by tenants
How the housing providers engaged with tenants
How the housing providers secured the increased income for tenants