Cost of living crisis, Universal Credit data and more

In this issue:

Debt Resolution Services for the public sector
Cost of living crisis: understand the challenges ahead
What linking children’s social care and benefits data tells us
Universal Credit data roundtable: Sharing more UC data with local authorities
Tell us: are you changing your CTR scheme changing in April?
On-demand webinar: Budgeting support: Best practice ways to help low-income households
Case study spotlight: Citizens Advice Caerphilly Blaenau Gwent
People news and January's blog posts

2022: the challenges ahead for low-income families

2022 looks set to bring particular challenges to low-income households:

Rising living costs, particularly energy bills
A fair and equitable recovery is needed
Debt and access to benefits

At Policy in Practice we have already been making steps to tackle these challenges. We are working closely with utility companies to highlight social tariffs on our calculator, helping households to bring the cost of their utility bills down. The calculator is fully Standard Financial Statement (SFS) compliant.

Deven Ghelani explores the cost of living crisis in his latest blog which you can read here.

Join our next webinar: Using data analysis to get ahead of the cost of living crisis
Wednesday 23 February
All our webinars are free and run from 10.30 to 11.45

Rising living costs, particularly energy bills, are putting more pressure on low-income families and this is set to intensify as the energy price cap is lifted in April. Many of these households, having recently been hit by the removal of the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, were struggling to get by anyway so their financial outlook for 2022 looks bleak.

The inadequacy of the welfare system is highlighted by research showing that the basic rate of benefits is at its lowest for thirty years.

Against this backdrop we look at work that local authorities are doing with their data to tackle poverty in this webinar.

Join this webinar to learn:

The impact of the pandemic and rising living costs on indebtedness
Case studies of local authorities helping people to grow their financial strength
The supporting role that technology can play

What linking children’s social care and benefits data tells us

Given the importance of poverty and deprivation as a driver of demand for social care, the financial circumstances of families should be a key concern for policymakers and sector leaders.

One way to address the gap is to link information about household income held in one place to information held elsewhere about children’s social care.

In order to test this hypothesis Policy in Practice, in collaboration with Kingston University, recently carried out a small feasibility study linking data sets from benefits and children’s social care.

The results showed that about half (48%) of children referred to children’s social care lived in households receiving means-tested benefits. 48% is much higher than the proportion of households receiving benefits in the general population and reflects the significance of low income, worklessness and poor housing conditions in the lives of children potentially needing social care support.

To learn more about this data linking work and to propose questions for further research in this field contact hello@policyinpractice.co.uk or call 0330 088 9242.

Read the findings here

Policy in Practice is supporting requests by local authorities to get access to more Universal Credit data so they can better support some of our most vulnerable residents. Local authorities increasingly see prevention as the best way of providing this support which, in turn, improves social outcomes. If we can prevent people from becoming homeless or getting into serious debt we can stop real hardship before it occurs. In doing so, we also make better use of public funds.

In order to undertake effective prevention work local authorities need data on most, ideally all, Universal Credit recipients in their area.

This month we held another of our regular Universal Credit data roundtables with leading local authorities to update on the progress made. This included improved political support for more use of UC data by local authorities as well as discussions around the table to overcome legal and technical barriers.

If you are a local authority and you are interested in using Universal Credit data for your prevention work please join us. Email hello@policyinpractice.co.uk for details.

Tell us: Are you changing your Council Tax Reduction scheme in April?

Policy in Practice's Benefit and Budgeting Calculator helps people to understand what benefits they can claim and what additional support is available. It is free to access from GOV.UK.

We are the only calculator to include the Council Tax Reduction Schemes of all local authorities in our policy engine, which we update annually. This means that frontline advisors can seamlessly advise customers if they are eligible for help to pay their council tax.

Our annual CTR update is round the corner so we'd be grateful if you could tell us if your council is changing it's CTR scheme from April 2022. Please click the button below to answer that one question. Thank you.

On demand webinar: Budgeting support: Best practice ways to help low-income households

We were delighted to host Keith Thorne, Citizens Advice Caerphilly Blaenau Gwent on our January webinar, Budgeting support: Best practice ways to help low-income households. Deven Ghelani, Genevieve Hampson and Ed McNamara from Policy in Practice also spoke.

Over one-fifth of UK households have less than £100 in savings to cushion themselves against economic shocks. With Christmas gone, frontline organisations anticipate more money-related enquiries from people in need as they seek support with their household finances.

In our first webinar of 2022 we heard from Keith about the budgeting challenges households in his area have, and what support they give to their customers.

Listen back to learn

Personal debt in the UK: the size and nature of the problem
How organisations from different sectors help people to grow their financial strength
What supporting role technology can play

View the slides, full webinar recording and clips of each speaker here.

Case study spotlight: Citizens Advice Caerphilly Blaenau Gwent

Citizens Advice Caerphilly Blaenau Gwent has had a hugely successful 2021 despite the challenges they faced.

A move from delivering advice in-person to solely digital was rapid and they had to react overnight to uncertain changes. At the same time, the need for advice was growing, as was their workforce. CA Caerphilly recruited more than 50 people remotely to deal with the rise in demand, who needed to be trained to a high level.

In the past year they have helped almost 6,000 clients achieve income gains of over £3 million. In recognition of this extraordinary achievement Citizens Advice Caerphilly was voted Charity of the Night at the Caerphilly Business Club awards 2021.

Read more about Citizens Advice Caerphilly Blaenau Gwent’s story here
Listen to Keith Thorne, Service Manager, CA Caerphilly speak on our January webinar here

We are currently recruiting for:

Policy and Research Manager
Policy and Data Analyst
Engineering team members
Business and Account Manager

Check out our latest vacancies and find out what it's like to work at Policy in Practice here.

It is with a heavy heart we say goodbye to Sam Tims. We wish you all the best, Sam, in your future endeavours.

Our Chief Technical Officer, David Carboni, wrote about building a positive engineering culture in his first blog post for Policy in Practice. Read more here.

January's blog posts

2022: The challenges ahead for low-income families

2022 is set to be a year with many challenges, especially for low-income households. We explore three of these and suggest actions that can make a difference.
Read more

What linking children’s social care and benefits data can tell us
Linking children's social care and benefits data may tell us more about hardship experienced by families referred to children’s social care.
Read more

The three pillars of a positive engineering culture
The three pillars of a positive engineering culture are autonomy, connection and mission writes our CTO, David Carboni.
Read more