Serious benefits - Citizens Advice

Spring 2003
Serious benefits
The success of CAB benefit take-up campaigns

The Citizens Advice service helps
people resolve their legal,
money and other problems by
providing information and
advice, and by influencing
policymakers. High quality
advice and information is
delivered from over 2000 outlets
across England, Wales and
Northern Ireland, as well as by
telephone, via the Internet, by
email and through the media.
Citizens Advice Bureaux deal
with over 1.6 million social
security problems each year and
check that all eligible benefits
and tax credits are being
received by their clients. In
addition, many run benefit
take-up campaigns to ensure
that local people are receiving
the benefits and tax credits to
which they are entitled.
Published in April 2003
by Citizens Advice,
115-123 Pentonville Road,
London N1 9LZ
Citizens Advice is an operating name
of The National Association of
Citizens Advice Bureaux. Registered
charity number 279057.
Additional copies of Serious benefits
can be downloaded or ordered at
www.citizensadvice.org.uk
or on 020 7833 7054
This issue of CAB News was
researched and written by Miranda
Kemp and designed by Matt Bellamy.
Photo credits: Front cover Getty Images, p4
Luton Borough Council; p5 Association for
London Government; p6 Justin Piperger; p7
NEA; p8/10 Citizens Advice Scotland; p9 Simon
Ridgway; p11 Arthur Rank Centre; p14 Mark
McKenzie; p15 Littlehampton CAB; p16
Department for Work and Pensions
All Citizens Advice Bureaux that collect data
on extra benefits gained for clients, must
follow a set procedure and only record benefit
amounts after payment is confirmed. Figures
are based on one-off lump sum payments,
including back-dated gains, plus increased
income for one year only. More information is
available on request from Citizens Advice
Information on 020 7833 2181.
Key contacts in the Citizens Advice service to discuss
developing partnerships:
Celia Pyke-Lees
Director of Services
020 7833 7125
celia.pyke-lees@citizensadvice.org.uk
Carey Wood-Duffy
Services Manager, Citizens
Advice Cymru
01745 586 400
carey.wood-duffy@citizensadvice.org.uk
Fran Targett
Director, Citizens Advice Cymru
01745 586 400
fran.targett@citizensadvice.org.uk
East:
Anne Moynihan 01223 356322
London:
Bobbie Pote 020 7549 0800
Midlands:
Kamaljit Sandhu 0115 941 8315
North:
Peter Rickard 0191 233 0700
Better Advice Better Health,
Delyth Owen
01970 636629
Buckingham CAB,
Margo Parfitt
01280 816787
Cambridge CAB,
Sonia Archdale
01223 222686
Citizens Advice Devon
Welfare Rights Unit,
01392 431616
Citizens Advice Somerset
Welfare Rights Unit,
Elizabeth Luke
01823 275985
Citizens Advice Surrey
Welfare Rights Unit,
Maria Zealey
01276 26707
Epsom & Ewell Borough Council,
Pauline George
01372 732000
Chris Bates
General Manager, Bureau
Development
0115 941 8315
chris.bates@citizensadvice.org.uk
Or contact one of our regional managers:
Jackie Robinson
Head of National Development
020 7833 7012
jackie.robinson@citizensadvice.org.uk
North West:
Paul Allen 0151 282 9000
South East:
Tina Thompson 02380 273 355
South West:
Pamela Woods 01392 425 517
Contacts for the projects featured in this publication:
Havering CAB,
Heather Ball
01708 735325
Luton CAB,
Ruth White
01582 487802
Luton Borough Council
Affordable Warmth Scheme,
Sarah Allen
01582 546979
Newcastle CAB In-Work
Benefit Project,
Pat Barrett
0191 276 6396
Norwich CAB
Steve Wiseman
01603 660857
Royton CAB 60+ campaign,
Tahra Javed
0161 624 5603
Tamworth CAB,
Susan Lamb
01827 709648
Uttlesford CAB,
John Willoughby
01799 526557
2 Serious benefits

Introduction
Inside...
“The work done by Citizens Advice Bureaux in benefit take-up is
absolutely invaluable. However much we try to make things
simple, it’s in the nature of benefit rules that there are some
complexities and it’s important that people are helped through
them. Sometimes if they’ve got cause to complain against us,
then it’s right that there is someone independent to represent
them.” Andrew Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Since the inception of the
welfare state, Citizens Advice
Bureaux have been helping
people to get the benefits and
assistance to which they are
entitled and in 2001-02, CAB
advisers helped with over
1.6 million benefit and tax
credit problems.
Benefit take-up campaigns
are run by many Citizens Advice
Bureaux, targeting sections of
the community who are failing
to claim what is rightly theirs,
including elderly people, people
with disabilities and low-income
families.
People over 75 are the largest
group not to claim their
entitlements, despite antipoverty
measures, such as the
minimum income guarantee
(MIG), designed to benefit the
two million pensioners who live
in poverty.
A National Audit Office*
report estimated that a third of
those entitled to MIG did not
claim it. This jumped to a
possible two-thirds for some
other benefits. The stigma of
claiming by a generation
brought up to ‘make do and
mend’ is great. Long,
complicated forms and a
confusing claims process are also
big barriers.
The effect of not claiming
entitlements can be profound.
It can mean scraping by on an
unnecessarily low income,
struggling to afford to pay
for basics.
The reorganisation of the
benefits system and emphasis on
means-testing, makes the takeup
work of Citizens Advice
Bureaux all the more vital.
Serious benefits looks at that
work, the keys to success, the
partnerships that succeed and
the people who gain.
There is much to be proud of.
Estimates are that some CAB
benefit take-up campaigns net
as much as £85 for claimants for
each £1 spent on running them
– money which helps lift that
person out of poverty and
benefits the community in
which it is spent.
It’s not just claimants who
gain from CAB benefit take-up
work. For each local person
claiming a particular benefit
(capped at a certain level), the
local authority receives a set
amount of extra cash from the
Government. This can bring in
many thousands of pounds for
the local authority.
We discuss the importance of
securing on-going funding and
look at some of the innovative
one-off projects and strong
partnerships that have achieved
exciting results.
And we ask the Secretary of
State for Work and Pensions,
about government initiatives to
increase claiming and the value
of Citizens Advice Bureaux work.
4 CAB research shows how
benefit take-up work can
radically improve the lives
of older people who are
under-claiming their
entitlements.
6 Targeting, home-visiting
and ongoing support are
key to improving benefit
take-up amongst hard-toreach
groups.
8 Good advice is good for
your health.
10 Why pooling resources and
sharing experience across
agencies is the way
forward.
12 Benefit take-up work is
vital, raising people’s
incomes and putting cash
back into local
communities. So why isn’t
money to fund the work
more forthcoming
14 CAB money and benefits
advice can help keep
tenants out of courts and in
their homes.
15 Citizens Advice Bureaux
share their benefit take-up
campaign expertise.
16 Andrew Smith, Secretary of
State for Work and
Pensions tells us how the
Government is addressing
benefit under-claiming.
Serious benefits 3

Benefit wisdom
“We have had our benefits increased, help we did not know was
available. It certainly has had an effect on our health and wellbeing.
We now have someone to turn to.” An elderly London
couple, CAB clients
The current generation of
pensioners are the most
affluent ever and yet two
million of them live in poverty.
Many are not aware of the
benefits to which they are
entitled and elderly people
under-claim benefits more than
any other group. As many as
870,000 people fail to claim
means-tested assistance,
struggling by on an
unnecessarily low income and,
according to the National Audit
Office, as much as £1.8 billion
went unclaimed by pensioners
in 1999-2000.*
be replicated by others.
The results of the survey
confirmed time and again, that
older people are simply not
getting the advice and
assistance they need to claim
their full benefit entitlements
and are missing out on cash that
would greatly improve the
quality of their lives - money
that would lift many of them
out of poverty.
Of the Citizens Advice
Bureaux that reported back,
102 had carried out take-up
campaigns. Of those, 68 gave
details of the financial gains
generation brought up to cope
and take responsibility for
themselves and their families.
As Rosa Vasquez, benefit takeup
campaign co-ordinator from
Havering CAB, says, “In the back
of their minds they might know
they could be due more, but
many are very private people
and proud people as well.”
For many, the desire to
remain in their own home is a
motivating factor in their
decision not to claim
entitlements. Plymouth CAB
noted that, “fear of being
forced into residential or
nursing care is common.
Reassurance is necessary that an
attendance allowance claim is
actually aimed at keeping
people in their homes.”
Camden CAB also found that
encouraging people to see
benefits as a ‘right’ and not a
hand-out – something that they
were entitled to – helped to
remove any anxieties that “their
need for help of either a
The benefits picture
In 2001, Citizens Advice Bureaux
were asked about their
experience of running benefit
take-up campaigns with older
people to establish the extent of
benefit take-up campaigns at a
local level and to find examples
of effective practice that could
Extra cash reduces pensioner poverty
“As you can imagine, the extra money
has made a huge difference to me.”
made for clients, an estimated
£13 million in unclaimed
benefits. Many bureaux work
with other local agencies such as
GP surgeries, hospitals, local
authority social services, housing
departments, social landlords
and voluntary organisations to
maximise income for people
who may not be aware of what
they are entitled to.
So why do older people fail
to claim what is theirs
Pride and privacy
Our survey of Citizens Advice
Bureaux found that there are
emotional as well as practical
reasons to explain why cash
goes unclaimed. Old-fashioned
stigma is a huge barrier for a
financial or practical nature
somehow represents a failing on
their behalf”.
Another obstacle to claiming
has been the length and
complexity of application forms.
Citizens Advice Bureaux report
that the 44-page attendance
allowance (AA) form, for
example, takes a minimum of
two hours to complete, often
far more. Although the
Government is piloting a new,
shorter form of only 16 pages,
the complexity of the process,
the amount of additional
information that has to be
supplied and a reluctance to
send original documentation,
like savings books, is often
enough to put off substantial
4 Serious benefits

numbers of claimants.
The report found that the
two most important factors in
benefit take-up work with older
people were face-to-face
contact and successful targeting.
One on one support
“Many elderly people are
reticent about enquiring, let
alone claiming their rights. They
are inclined to play down care
needs, were bemused and put
off by procedures and were
deterred by the somewhat
public aspect of claiming.” says
Lesley Cullen, the survey report’s
author. “Face-to-fact contact is
considered by Citizens Advice
Bureaux to be nigh-on essential
to overcome a reluctance to
claim, assure confidentiality, fill
in the forms for clients and to
help them through the complex
claims process.”
Havering CAB linked their
benefits take-up campaign to
the reissue of freedom travel
passes for senior citizens and
disabled residents. A leaflet
promoting the service was sent
out with the new pass. Potential
claimants requiring a benefits
check returned a tear-off slip to
the CAB. First contact was made
by telephone to establish
possible eligibility and a
meeting offered. Face to face
interviews were carried out at
the CAB or Age Concern offices
or, if necessary, a home visit was
arranged. Mrs S, 81, was a local
resident who received a home
visit. “My daughter had helped
Benefit checks for Freedom travel
pass holders
“My father won £1100 in back-dated benefits and an extra £56
a week. He was really struggling before but is much, much
happier now.”
Aslam Bhutta has nothing but praise for the CAB’s assistance
with his 81-year-old father’s attendance allowance claim.
“We found out about the CAB through an elderly friend of the
family, who Tahra had helped. She did an excellent job – we
could never have made the claim
without her. She came to my
father’s house with the forms
and filled them in with us. It took
2-3 hours but she explained, in
Urdu, everything she was doing
and how the process worked. My
father won £1100 in back-dated
benefits and an extra £56 a week.
He was really struggling before but
is much, much happier now.”
me make a claim for attendance
allowance before and we had
been refused. Rosa came from
Havering CAB and helped me fill
in the AA and MIG forms – it
was quite complicated – and we
got the money almost
immediately. My weekly income
has gone up by about £85 a
week. The physiotherapist had
recommended that I buy a
better chair that I had been
unable to afford before so I
bought that. Also I can now pay
for a chiropodist to come and
do my feet regularly. Rosa was
very helpful and, as you can
imagine, the extra money has
made a huge difference to me.”
Intended target
The report also found that
targeting potential claimants
generated a higher proportion
of successful awards and can
yield impressive amounts of
unclaimed benefits, often backdated
years, for clients who had
previously been unaware of their
entitlements or who needed
support to make a claim.
Tahra Javed of Royton CAB in
Oldham targets the over 60s in
the ethnic communities and has
offered a fortnightly outreach
advice sessions at a local
organisation attended by many
Pakistani women, as well as
arranging to visit community
centres, mosques and temples.
Language difficulties are one of
the main reasons for underclaiming.
“Many older Asian
people don’t read, even in their
mother tongues, so being
helped to claim by someone
from their own community who
can speak their language is
vital,” says Tahra, who speaks
Urdu and Punjabi. “They can
spend a huge amount of time
isolated indoors – isolated by
their language and therefore
isolated from communications
about rights and entitlements.”
Cash flow
The benefit gain per £1 spent
for the CAB take-up campaigns
featured in the report was an
average of £85 per client – the
sort of sum that can make a
tremendous difference to an
elderly person on a low income,
buying them increased
independence, greater mobility,
better health, warmth and
peace of mind.
Serious benefits 5

Target practice
Citizens Advice Bureaux have
found that successful targeting
of hard-to-reach groups
involves advisers reaching out
to them wherever they are.
There is a raft of reasons why
many people can be isolated
from mainstream sources of
information about their rights -
they might be house-bound,
have mental health problems or
English may not be their first
language.
Reaching them might mean
operating outreach sessions at
GP surgeries, community
centres, sheltered housing units,
churches and mosques or
contacting them directly by
letter or through a relevant
medium, such as local radio or in
partnership with other agencies.
In sickness and in health
The significant link between
poverty and ill-health has
prompted many Citizens Advice
Bureaux to target benefit takeup
campaigns through health
settings – either by offering
advice services in the surgery
itself, by setting up a referral
service with GPs or by
organising a mail-shot, targeting
particular groups of patients,
offering a CAB appointment or
a home-visit.
Working in partnership with a
local health centre, Buckingham
CAB sent letters, signed by the
doctors, to patients aged 80 and
over, offering them a benefit
check. In the three years that the
project has run, more than 300
people have been helped with
benefits and services take-up.
Over £250,000 in increased
Keep it in the family
Juggling work and the needs
of the family is hard at the
best of times. When money
is tight, well-placed advice
can make all the difference.
The Newcastle In-Work
Benefit project targets
benefits advice at people
who are thinking about
moving into work, training,
education or changing jobs.
There is a perception that
taking a job can mean you
end up worse off because
the benefits you receive are
reduced or stopped. Many
people need advice to check
other entitlements like tax
credits and to be reassured
that they won’t lose out by
working. The CAB can do
detailed calculations to help
people make accurate and
informed decisions.
Mrs Harwood, a working mother from Newcastle, was working
in IT support eight hours a week but was still eligible for income
support at a reduced rate. “I’d been bringing up the children
for 15 years so the job eased me back into the world of work
and, although I only ended up about £15 a week better off
because of my reduced income support, it was still worth it. I
went to see the CAB when I wanted to increase my hours to 16
a week. I was worried that it would leave me really out-ofpocket.”
Although her income support stopped, the CAB helped
Mrs Harwood make a
claim for working
families’ tax credit that
left her over £100 a week
better off.
“I thought the CAB
service was excellent,
especially the speed. They
were able to give me an
answer and put my mind
at rest immediately.”
annual income for those patients
has been gained, money which
should continue to be paid year
on year.
“Of all the targeting
methods, we have found that
letters from the GP is the most
manageable for us,” says
Buckingham CAB manager
Margo Parfitt.
Lyn Bensley, the surgery’s
practice manager, praises the
CAB’s work and says that it has
resulted in a marked decrease in
the number of GP consultations
and home visits requested by
their older patients, which in
turn has increased access and GP
availability for other patients.
6 Serious benefits

Face to face
For many people with
disabilities and older people
who have difficulty getting
around, Citizens Advice
Bureaux have found that home
visits, where there is face-toface
contact with the client,
are essential to successful
benefit take-up work.
It takes time to explain the
benefit process and to actually
fill in the form – all of which is
made much easier if the client is
more relaxed in their own
home. It also assures
confidentiality for the client,
helps overcome reluctance to
claim and helps to build trust
and confidence.
Pauline George was seconded
from Epsom and Ewell Borough
Council to work with the
Citizens Advice Bureau at Surrey
Welfare Rights Unit. Her brief
was to increase benefit take-up
amongst the local older
population and people who
might be under-claiming
disability benefits. Home visits
are central to her work. Pauline
and her colleagues tried helping
clients to fill in forms over the
telephone but quickly found
that seeing a claimant in their
home situation gave them a
much better idea of their
personal circumstances. It is a
chance to observe first-hand
how well a person is coping.
“A person might initially appear
to be on top of things. Then,
during the home visit, you’ll
leave the room for a few
minutes and, when you return,
the client might ask you who
you are and how long you’ve
been there. So you get a much
better idea of their ability to
look after themselves and can
help them complete their claim
accordingly”, says Pauline. It is
also important to build a
relationship with a client over a
period of time, where different
aspects of their situation reveal
themselves and trust builds up.
“Home visits are time-consuming
but absolutely essential.”
Lean on me
Many people need on-going
support with their benefit claims
– either because a claim has
been refused and they need
help making an appeal, or
because their situation changes.
Havering CAB had an elderly
client with arthritis. “Her fingers
were quite twisted and her
manual dexterity was poor.
However, her claim for
incapacity benefit was rejected,”
recalled adviser Rosa Vasquez.
Rosa supported her client
through a benefit appeal, where
the judge asked her whether
she’d be able to turn off her
taps, if he turned them on for
her. She said she wouldn’t and,
for that reason, she left her
water running the whole time.
“You really need to be able to
see the person to make an
assessment of their situation,
”says Rosa.
Claims confusion
Working with clients who have
mental health problems can be
like trying to untangle a huge
ball of string, says Sonia
Archdale, mental health adviser
at Cambridge CAB. “Clients can
be confused about what
benefits they get already, how
Home visits paint a clearer picture
“Home visits are
time-consuming
but absolutely
essential.”
long they have been getting
them and, if they have a period
of in-patient care, it can affect
their claim and then things get
even more complicated.”
For some clients, the CAB
provides invaluable stability and
continuity. Sonia has clients that
she has been working with for
years, through many different
sets of claims. Her notes and
copies of their old claim forms
provide a benefit claims history
that means she knows exactly
what they’ve been getting, even
if they – and the benefits
agencies – sometimes lose track.
Serious benefits 7

Improving health
“We have GPs crying out for
the service, so we know the
need is there.”
The health of people in Wales
is poor compared with the
majority of Europeans and
people in other parts of the UK.
Life expectancy in some areas of
the South Wales Valleys is nearly
five years less than in other parts
of Wales. The National Assembly
of Wales' report Better Health
Better Wales identified that ‘a
person’s social and economic
circumstances are probably the
strongest influence on health,
avoidable sickness and
premature death.’ There is a
close correlation between the
patterns of deprivation, illness
and disease and disability
benefit enquiries are 4 per cent
higher in Welsh Citizens Advice
Bureaux than in England.
In April 2001, Jane Hutt,
Assembly Minister for Health
and Social Services, announced a
grant of £2 million over three
years to Citizens Advice Cymru,
to implement an ambitious
project: Better Advice Better
Targeting deprivation through
advice in health settings
Marjorie Deeds and her husband have not worked for many
years due to both mental and physical health problems.
Newport CAB helped Mrs Deeds to make a successful appeal
for the higher rate of both the mobility and care components
of the disability living allowance. The success led to increases in
the couple’s income support and also eligibility for invalid care
allowance, a weekly benefit payable to someone caring for a
person who is severely disabled. The couple, who had been
experiencing debt problems, won back-dated benefits of
£2,900 and are due to receive a further back-dated enhanced
disability premium, which increases the amount of income
support for severely disabled people, of some £850. Their
weekly income has already increased by £95.55 per week.
“The system is very
complicated and I
can’t see how anyone
could navigate it on
their own without
expert advice.”
Health, in partnership with
primary health care teams
across Wales.
“GPs have to deal with many
clinical problems where the
solution is not medical but
depends on improving the
patient’s quality of life. They do
not have the time and, cannot
be expected to possess a
knowledge of the very complex
system of welfare services. This
initiative is designed to help
them and their patients,” the
Minister commented.
The aim was to maximise
income for those people in
deprived areas, whose health is
likely to be affected by poverty.
Better Advice Better Health
projects direct advice through
health settings – GP surgeries,
health centres, hospitals and
home visits – in a co-ordinated
way across all 22 local authorities
in Wales, targeting areas of
highest deprivation. Each of the
projects aims to see 200 new
CAB clients, deal with 650 new
problems and raise an increased
annual income for that client
group of £200,000 every year –
an overall target of £4.4 million.
Delyth Owens of Citizens Advice
Cymru is confident that they will
reach this target. “We have
bureaux that have reached
£200,000 in less than ten months
and we have GPs crying out for
the service, so we know the
need is there.”
“Through Better Advice
Better Health, we have become
specialists in health-related
benefits. We are able to identify
when someone should be
eligible for a particular benefit
that can then trigger eligibility
to other benefits. The system is
very complicated and I can’t see
how anyone could navigate it
on their own without expert
advice,” says Hilary Jay of
Newport CAB.
8 Serious benefits

• Telford and Wrekin CAB have
teamed up with Dial
Shropshire to deliver advice
on benefits and other issues
through their health
practitioners. The launch of
the project follows a
successful pilot at The Princess
Royal Hospital maternity unit.
Developed in partnership with
Telford and Wrekin council,
the local health partnership
and the Community Legal
Service, it has attracted over
£290,000 funding from the
Community Fund for its first
three years.
The Better Advice Better Health project helped the Moss
family claim the benefits to which they were entitled
When Taniya Moss became pregnant, she and her husband
returned to England after working in France for several years.
She was on a bank training course when complications in her
pregnancy meant that she became unable to work. As a trainee and
not an employee, and because she had only been back in England
for a short time, she was unsure of her entitlements. Her GP referred
her to the CAB outreach session at the surgery, part of the Better
Advice Better Health project. The CAB adviser found that, because
Taniya had been paying national insurance contributions in France,
she was eligible to contributions-based incapacity benefit here and a
back-dated award of over £700 was made. Once Taniya’s daughter
was born, the incapacity benefit stopped but a successful claim for
working families’ tax credit came through and they were also
eligible for a £500 Sure Start grant to help with the costs of their
new baby. “If it hadn’t been for Hilary at the CAB, we wouldn’t have
known about any of these benefits – I’m sure I wouldn’t have got
the incapacity benefit. To be honest, nobody at the Job Centre really
seemed to understand the system as well as the CAB,” says Taniya
“They were fantastic, really efficient.”
• Working with Norwich CAB,
Dr Richard Reading at the
School of Health and Policy
and Practice at the University
of East Anglia has published
research* measuring the
benefits obtained by families
with young children from a
Citizens Advice service in
primary care. The study used
quantitative and qualitative
research and interviewed
families with children younger
than one-year-old. “The
evidence of a causal link
between poverty and
impaired maternal and child
health is convincing and
widely accepted,” says Dr
Reading “Although our
sample was small, we
concluded that an advice
service is a useful component
of primary health care for
young families and offers
considerable benefits to
families with young children.”
• Lancing CAB used Carers’
Rights Day to give carers in
the area the chance to learn
more about what benefits
they are entitled to by
running a benefits advice
session at the Shoreham
Carers Centre.
Serious benefits 9

United we stand
The experience of Citizens
Advice Bureaux over many
years has shown that working
with others – social services,
housing departments, primary
care trusts, social landlords and
charities – is the key to finding
effective and lasting solutions.
People’s needs sometimes
remain unmet even when a
number of different agencies
have had contact with them.
Joining together to provide a
holistic service delivers better
results than individual groups
working in isolation from one
another.
Benefit take-up work by
Luton CAB is central to the
success of Luton Borough
Council’s Affordable Warmth
Scheme, which has been
awarded the prestigious ‘beacon
status’ for its excellence and
innovation by the Government.
The CAB works with energy
suppliers, housing teams and
social services in the area to
deliver a joined-up service for
older local people who are
identified as possibly suffering
from fuel poverty. This means
that they spend 10 per cent or
more of their income on fuel to
maintain an adequate standard
of warmth. Project managers
devised a simple referral form
that takes only a few minutes to
fill in and enables people
working with households at risk
of or experiencing fuel poverty
to make fast track referrals for
assistance. These include
benefits advice from the Citizens
Advice Bureau, access to the
Government's Warm Front grant
(which can be up to £2,500 to
help cover the costs of home
insulation and of improving
energy efficiency) and to
social services for a
needs assessment.
Regular energy
awareness training is
provided free of charge
to those who make
referrals.
Interagency
working
improves the
service to clients
Join together
“Joined-up working may be a
cliché but it works. Many
different agencies have reason
to visit the homes of Luton
residents - to collect rent, deliver
meals on wheels or provide
health care. Trained staff are
able to look beyond their
specific remit and discuss wider
fuel poverty issues with
customers, and identify
potential problems that are
logged with the central coordinator
who then makes a
referral to the appropriate
agency,” says Sarah Allen of the
social inclusion team at Luton
Borough Council.
“With all the
agencies working
together, we’ve
become each other’s
eyes and ears.”
Ruth White, Luton CAB
project leader, describes a typical
referral. Mr and Mrs Knight
were referred to the CAB from
Luton social services’ older
people’s mental health team for
a benefit check. “They were just
getting Mr Knight’s lower rate
attendance allowance (AA). We
appealed for the higher rate
which he got and Mrs Knight
put in a claim for AA herself,
which she won, too. Their
minimum income guarantee was
increased so they ended up over
£90 a week better off.” The CAB
also arranged for a grant from
the Royal British Legion that
meant the couple were able to
have new windows fitted at a
cost of £390 instead of the full
price of £1690. Mr and Mrs
Knight were then referred onto
the Affordable Warmth team at
the council who got loft and
10 Serious benefits

insulation fitted and had a stair
lift installed. “With all the
agencies working together,
we’ve become each other’s eyes
and ears, ” says Ruth “I don’t
feel so over-whelmed when I
have a client with lots of
problems that need solving. It’s
like ‘I can’t help you – but I
know a man who can!’”
“The income-raising part of
the scheme, with Luton CAB, is
definitely the most successful
aspect. The first year was funded
by £14,000 from the
Government’s Health Action
Zone grant and together we
raised £360,000 in increased
annual benefits for local people,
an impressive £25 for every £1
invested,” says Sarah Allen. “The
success has been such that, even
at a time when the council was
experiencing serious financial
constraints, the argument to
continue the work was so strong
that they committed to investing
funding of £30,000 a year so
Luton CAB can carry on with the
Affordable Warmth Scheme.”
Fair’s fair
From 2003, under the
Department of Health’s fairer
charging guidelines, local
authorities will have to ensure
that the contributions that older
clients and people with
disabilities are expected to make
towards the cost of their home
care and other non-residential
social services, are based on a
detailed financial assessment.
The guidelines also require that
a benefits check should be
offered to service users
whenever local councils make an
assessment of ability to pay.
Devon Welfare Rights Unit
(DWRU) is a Citizens Advice
project that, along with Devon
Citizens Advice Bureaux, has
been working on mainstreaming
welfare rights advice for a
number of years. As a result,
they have been invited by
Devon County Council to be part
of the Devon Finance and
Benefits (FAB) joint team, along
with the Pension Service homevisiting
section. To date, the FAB
team in Devon is the only one to
have been established with a
voluntary sector organisation as
a full partner. Nora Corkery of
DWRU says: “Initial results have
shown that CAB advisers have
been very effective in using the
home visit referrals to identify a
wide range of entitlements that
clients were missing out on.
These include income support
and disability living allowance,
eligibility for council tax and
council tax disability reductions
and valid claims for independent
living allowance, housing
benefit and invalid care
allowance.” The success of the
pilot scheme has led Devon
County Council to agree
additional funding for the
equivalent of 6.5 extra CAB
posts to fulfil the fairer charging
work in Devon.
Reaping benefits
Castle Morpeth CAB in
Northumberland serves a rural
community that includes farmers
and agricultural workers, many
of whom are self-employed.
Take-up of means-tested
benefits is very poor amongst
these groups, partly because
showing proof of income and
capital, when business and
personal assets are often
intertwined, is off-putting for
claimants. The CAB has received
£11,000 from the Department of
the Environment, Farming and
Rural Affairs (DEFRA) via the
Rural Stress Information Fund to
cover a nine-month take-up
campaign across the area, to
make sure that people are
getting their entitlements to the
new tax credits. “Important
differences with the new
working tax credit and child tax
credit are that capital is ignored
and estimates of income are
accepted, as errors will be
reconciled later through tax
assessments. The Inland Revenue
accepts applications from thirdparties
like us on behalf of
claimants, which should make
claiming much easier for them,”
says Brian Smith of Castle
Morpeth CAB. Leaflets will go
out to 25,000 households in the
area and the CAB will make an
initial assessment of entitlement
via a dedicated telephone line. If
it looks like the caller is entitled,
an on-line application can be
made on that person's behalf.
All step forward
When Basildon CAB asked their volunteers who would like to train
to specialise in advising on attendance allowance and disability
living allowance claims, they had no difficulty in finding volunteers.
“Because the volunteers have built up expertise, it allows the paid
social security experts in the bureau to concentrate on their other
case work,” says welfare rights adviser Nickie Kimber.
If you would like to volunteer to train as an adviser at your local
Citizens Advice Bureau, call 08451 264264 and you will be put in
touch with the CAB nearest to you that is looking for volunteers.
Serious benefits 11

Hard cash
As many CAB benefit take-up
campaigns reap substantial
sums, often millions, it’s money
that can really boost the local
economy.
Funding CAB benefit take-up
work makes complete
financial sense for those who
hold the purse strings – whether
local authorities, primary care
trusts or other funders, not least
because increased incomes are
largely spent within the local
area. However, CAB managers
still spend huge amounts of
time looking for funds to pay
for work that has proven its
value time and time again.
John Willoughby is the
manager at Uttlesford CAB in a
rural part of Essex. He spends 25
per cent of his time looking for
funding, including funds to
continue a very successful
disability benefits take-up
campaign.
An original grant for £15,000
over three years came from the
Prevention Fund, government
money administered by Essex
social services. Uttlesford was
chosen because it had a
particularly low uptake of
disability living allowance and
attendance allowance. In
eighteen months, 207 people
achieved successful claims with
CAB help and the total annual
income for them was increased by
a huge £557,000. The total for the
campaign has since risen to over
£1.2 million, with over 500 people
seen by a specialist adviser.
Value for money
Even though the project proved
value-for-money – an average of
£37 reaped for claimants for each
£1 invested - it was threatened
with closure when the funding
ended in March 2002. John was
told that the Prevention Fund (renamed
‘Promoting
Independence’) had been slashed
The Department of Trade and Industry commissioned a fiveyear
review of the CAB service* that concluded:
“The CAB service provides excellent value in return for the
public funding it receives. It makes a significant contribution to
individuals and communities, as well as to the process of policymaking
and service delivery. Its holistic approach, national
coverage and independence are values to be cherished.”
The review also noted that the CAB service contributes to
reducing social exclusion in many ways, including increasing
incomes by helping people claim benefits, and does much to
promote social regeneration.
by 50 per cent and his grant was
to be drastically reduced to £5250
for one year only.
“The Community Fund won’t
fund projects that have
previously been funded from
statutory sources, which this had
been, so unless we re-structured
and re-named the project, which
we didn’t want to do having just
got it up and running, we
couldn’t get money from them,”
says John.
John made applications to a
number of different sources. An
approach to the Essex
Community Foundation, which
administers the European Social
Fund, yielded £1300. An
application to the Fielder Trust
brought in a life-saving £6,000
six months later. And, at the
eleventh hour, £4,800 came
through from Essex social
services and from the local
primary care trust.
Many primary care trusts are
involved in funding CAB benefit
take-up work. “If our services
are allowing people home from
hospital, for example, because
they are then able to pay for
the extra care they need with
the benefits we have got, I think
local primary care trusts should
fund some of that work because
it impacts positively on their
services by freeing up both
hospital beds and clinical time,”
John points out.
Precarious funding
The length of time it takes to
hear whether applications have
been successful can be a real
problem. Project manager
Lyndie Taylor has, on two
occasions, been ten days away
from losing her job. “Both times
the situation has been very
precarious and, much as I enjoy
my job, I have had to start
looking around for other work
before enjoying a last minute
reprieve!” says Lyndie. “It makes
12 Serious benefits

“The system’s
designed to make
you give up and the
average punter
does.”
Mr Turner, a CAB client from
Essex, suffers from chronic
muscle fatigue and rheumatoid
arthritis. He was initially refused
disability living allowance but
eventually won the higher rate
mobility component – an extra
£39.30 a week – with Lyndie’s
help. “The system’s designed to
make you give up and the
average punter does. You have
to go through such a rigmarole.
But, if we had a setback, Lyndie
would just get back on the
’phone and blow them out of
their socks! She knew a way
through the red tape.”
things very difficult for everyone
that funding is so piecemeal.”
Paper chase
Current funds will end in
October 2003 so John will soon
start looking for more money
from primary care trusts and
social services again.
“I can see that some projects
have a natural life and that the
Government doesn’t want to
keep sending money out into a
black hole. I am happy for
reviews to be built in, even
every six months, to check that
the referrals are still coming in,
the need is still there and that
customer satisfaction levels are
good. But if a successful project
is up and running, it seems daft
to fund it for less than a
minimum of three years.
Otherwise you are just on a
total paper chase the whole
time,” he says.
Money matters
It’s not just claimants who gain
from CAB benefit take-up
work. The Formula Spending
Share, previously known as the
Standard Spending Assessment
(SSA), is the amount of money
given to local authorities by
central government each year.
The formula used to work out
how much each local authority
gets, takes into account local
poverty indicators, such as how
many elderly people live in the
area and how many are
claiming benefits. Simply put,
for each person claiming a
particular benefit, capped at a
certain number, the local
authority receives a set amount
of extra cash from the
Government.
Community benefits
In Somerset, the local
authorities receive around
£900 via the Formula Spending
Share for every attendance
allowance claimant. Somerset
Welfare Rights Unit (SWRU),
which oversees the benefit
take-up work of four Citizens
Advice Bureaux across the
county, is funded by the local
authority to the tune of some
£104,000 a year. Elizabeth Luke
from SWRU reports that
successes during their 2000/01
campaign included 194 new
attendance allowance (AA)
claimants. Under the old SSA
formula, each of those new AA
claims had the potential to
bring in an extra £890 per
head to Somerset local
authority coffers, a total of
£172,660 – a substantial
£68,660 more than the local
authority’s annual investment
in the SWRU. That’s on top of
the staggering £935,207
reaped in additional income
for local people during the
campaign overall. “The local
authority get back roughly ten
times what they put in, which
isn’t a bad deal. And of course
most of that money is spent
locally, so the local community
benefits on a much wider level,
too,” says Elizabeth.
Serious benefits 13

Getting the
house in order
• Esher CAB ran a Benefit Take
Up Campaign for Pensioners
when the Minimum Income
Guarantee levels were
increased in 2001. They soon
realised that these changes
would result in more
pensioners being eligible for
partial Council Tax Benefit.
Esher CAB raised the issue
with Elmbridge Borough
Council who agreed to use
their database of current
Housing Benefit claims to
identify pensioners receiving
some Housing Benefit but no
Council Tax Benefit. The
Council then wrote to those
identified to ask whether they
wished to make a claim for
partial Council Tax Benefit in
addition to Housing Benefit.
For owner occupiers the
Council undertook to identify
previous applicants who had
made unsuccessful claims to
check whether because of the
changes, they now qualified.
• In the last eighteen months,
Dartford CAB has arranged
three training sessions with
housing officers from the local
authority housing department
on topics like benefits
awareness, budgeting and
debt. As a result, housing
officers are more able to
identify where tenants may
be under-claiming benefits
and will readily refer tenants
to the CAB for debt advice.
Everybody wins by investing in
income maximisation. Rents
are paid, homes are kept and
expensive possession action is
avoided.
Arecent Citizens Advice social
policy report, Possession
action - the last resort
highlights how increasingly,
social landlords appreciate the
part that independent CAB
money and benefits advice can
play in keeping tenants who are
behind with their rent out of
the courts and in their homes.
More and more social landlords
advise tenants to seek CAB help
as soon as a rent payment is
late. Some housing officers have
developed systems that refer
tenants who are having financial
difficulties direct to the CAB,
before resorting to court action.
Advice focusing on income
maximisation, including
checking that all the benefits
and tax credits to which a
tenant may be eligible are being
claimed and providing help to
make claims, can mean the
difference between maintaining
a tenancy and eviction.
Such are the benefits that
some social landlords fund CAB
to support their tenants. One of
those is Eastern Valley Housing
Association, which funds Torfaen
CAB to employ a part time
money adviser post specifically
to help their tenants.
Citizens Advice suggests a
‘statement of practice’ to help
prevent evictions which
recommends that social
landlords should ‘provide their
tenants with access to welfare
rights advice across the full
range of benefits’.
Developing good working
relationships with other
agencies is central to success.
Stroud CAB reports that its local
authority regularly accepts CAB
offers on behalf of tenants with
rent arrears and will ring the
CAB if a client has defaulted on
an arrangement that the CAB
has negotiated, to see if they
know why there is a problem.
So important is joint
working, that in 2002, Citizens
Advice and the Camden Housing
Benefit Service produced
Everyone Benefits, a model for
establishing and developing
liaison between local authority
housing benefits services and
Citizens Advice Bureaux. Its aim
was to promote good practice
and facilitate continuous
improvement in service delivery
and accountability on housing
benefit. The section on
promotion and take-up
highlights the need ‘to reach
those in the local community
who find the claims process
difficult and confusing’.
Everyone Benefits is
endorsed by the Department for
Work and Pensions (DWP) which
suggests that the guide
complements its own national
performance standards for
secure and effective housing
benefit and council tax benefit
administration.
14 Serious benefits

Sharing experience
Citizens Advice social
policy evidence reports
Citizens Advice Bureaux have
learnt much about how to
execute successful benefit
take-up campaigns. Sharing
expertise helps others to run
them successfully and
efficiently.
Partnerships
Building good working
relationships with other local
agencies concerned with
benefit take-up and pooling
resources to run joint
campaigns is central to many
successful campaigns.
Face-to-face contact
Where resources allow,
personalised contact is
extremely effective in building
trust and the confidence to
claim. Many people need this
high level of support to
negotiate the system.
Targeting
Specific targeting of particular
groups is more valuable than
‘blanket’ campaigns. Outreach
sessions at appropriate venues
are also very important.
Using resources
Using resources that are
available can save ‘reinventing
the wheel’. Other interested
agencies may have resources
which can be used to help
your campaign. Try the local
authority, the Department for
Work and Pensions and
charities such as Age Concern.
Job satisfaction
Benefit take-up work gives
high levels of satisfaction to
CAB workers and volunteers
alike, because the benefit to
clients is so immediately
apparent.
Monitoring and recording
results
Taking time to work out a
system to record and evaluate
the results of a campaign pays
dividends. Making sure that
everyone involved has been
trained to use the same system
is vital. It is important to be
able to accurately demonstrate
the effectiveness of the work
to funders and the local
community.
Staff time
Don’t under-estimate the
resources needed for a
campaign, including staff and
management and time for
recording and evaluation. Bear
in mind that some clients will
need ongoing advocacy,
especially if they require
support to make appeals.
Reports published by Citizens
Advice can be downloaded or
ordered at
www.citizensadvice.org.uk or on
020 7833 7054.
• Possession action – the last
resort, 2003.
• CAB campaigns for benefit
take-up among older people,
2002.
• Everyone Benefits: A guide to
promoting partnerships
between Local Authority
Housing Benefit Services and
Citizens Advice Bureaux, 2002.
• Unfair and underfunded: CAB
evidence on what’s wrong
with the Social Fund, 2002.
• Benefit administration
campaign report: national
summary, 2002.
• Work in progress: CAB clients’
experience of Working
Families Tax Credit, 2001.
• Falling short: the CAB case for
housing benefit reform, 1999.
• Benefits and work: a CAB
perspective on the welfare to
work debate, 1997.
References
• Introduction/p4: Tackling
Pensioner Poverty -
Encouraging Take-up of
Entitlements, National Audit
Office, November 2002.
• Page 9: Citizens advice in
primary care for families with
young children, August 2001,
School of Health Policy and
Practice, University of East
Anglia.
• Page 12: OPM quinquennial
review of Citizens Advice
Bureaux 2001/2002 for the
Department of Trade and
Industry (www.dti.gov.uk).
Serious benefits 15

Last word
Serious benefits talks to
Andrew Smith, Secretary of
State for Work and Pensions.
“I know from
first-hand
experience just
how much my
constituents,
members of
the public,
have benefited
from having
that independent source of
advice and support.”
It was reported recently that up
to one-third of people who
were entitled to minimum
income guarantee (MIG) aren’t
claiming it. Will the new
pension credit be any different
Our campaigns around MIG
attracted a good response.
Something like 250,000 extra
MIG claims have resulted in
140,000 people being on average
£20 a week better off as a
consequence, so the Government
is tackling the issue. There are
obviously still people who could
gain a significant amount by
claiming what they are entitled
to. With the introduction of the
pension credit, there’ll be a big
promotional take-up campaign
by the Government. We will
automatically transfer people
who are on MIG onto the
pension credit. We’ll be writing
to all pensioners who are not in
receipt of MIG spelling out very
clearly their entitlement and
putting the message across that -
and it’s very important with
pensioners - that this isn’t some
sort of handout they are getting,
it’s their right.
People seem to be put off
claiming because the process is
so complex. Do you think that
means-testing inevitably means
that less people will claim
If you are taking account of
people’s income there has to be
some assessment. What we’ve
tried to do, is is to make that as
simple and sensitive as possible
so reducing a 40-page claim
form to a 10-page one, removing
some of the extraneous and
irrelevant questions which were
in there before. With the
pension credit, we’re getting
away from the idea of the old
weekly means test towards an
assessment which, unless there is
a major change in people’s
circumstances, will last them for
five years. I think this will be a
big help.
Is there an argument for a
face-to-face assessment every
five years
The creation of the Pension
Service is another very important
way in which we are developing
our services. I really do believe
that having a service dedicated
to pensioners will make a big
difference because of those
connotations - wrong though
they are, about handouts and so
on. A local service will be
available where it’s required, to
make home visits, to work in
partnership with other bodies,
like Citizens Advice Bureaux and
others, to hold surgery sessions
for example, and to have that
face to face contact. I read the
report on CAB benefit take-up
campaigns and recognise the
importance of face-to-face
contact.
Bringing in call centres and
user-friendly telephone services
is something that increasingly
pensioners, like other people,
are coming to take for granted.
It’s not right for everybody but,
for a lot of people, it’s a world
of help.
It is also important that we
reach out to people in all
communities. I recently visited a
Chinese community centre in my
own constituency to talk about
the new pension credit. For
many of the 100 or so people
there, English was not their first
language and they had little
understanding of which benefits
they were entitled to. It is the
nature of some communities
that they can be quite isolated
and we must make sure that
services reach them.
We know from our research
that CAB benefit take up
campaigns are very cost
effective. But Bureaux are
constantly having to reapply
for funding to do that work.
Who should be paying for
benefit take-up work
This is one of those areas
where, however much the
Government does, it is
important that there are
independent centres of advice
for people, where you’ve got
specialist benefits advice
workers, providing an invaluable
independent resource, so I don’t
think it’s either/or. I think the
Government has to be doing it
but there is this wider role for
advice centres.
www.dwp.gov.uk
www.thepensionservice.gov.uk
16 Serious benefits