Tag Archives: Guardian

Tips and tutorials

25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – the first 10

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We’ve compiled a list of 25 useful Twitter accounts if you want to follow welfare reform. In this post we reveal the first 10…

1. Joseph Rowntree Fdn.  @jrf_uk,   @Helen_Barnard

Helen Barnard is Research Programme Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), the social research policy charity of Quaker origins.

The JRF conducts a range of research into welfare issues, and created the MIS, the Minimum Income Standard, estimating what is an adequate income based on what the public believe to be minimum living standards.

2. ResolutionFoundation @resfoundation

Living standards report Look out for the launch of their study The State of Living Standards 2014 on February 11th. Continue reading 25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – the first 10 →

data, Housing

Data: limited housing availability following benefit caps

The Guardian is following the caps to housing benefits with data on the limited housing now available across the country to “job seekers [, the] disabled, lone parents, others unable to work such as pensioners or those in low paid employment.”:

“The study shows in many parts of the country there will be thousands more welfare claimants than there are properties that can be afforded by benefits alone – raising the possibility that the poor will be compelled to migrate to “benefit ghettoes” along the coast or in the north. Try for yourself by clicking on the accompanying map – for example Brighton and Hove shows”

Help Me Investigate Health contributor Carl Plant has already visualised some of the data here.

Disability

Isle of Wight’s cuts to care services ruled unlawful

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A decision to restrict eligibility to community care services on the Isle of Wight has been overturned by a high court judge and considered unlawful – a small victory to the disabled under the council’s care.

The Guardian reports:

“Previously, the council had allocated care assistance to adults assessed to be at critical or substantial risk, the top two levels of a four-tier system. But in February the authority, facing a £33m funding gap after central government cuts, voted to restrict this to those at critical risk. The council argued that the high percentage of retired people on the Isle of Wight made it particularly vulnerable to social care costs.”

The legal action was brought on by the lawyers of two 32-year disabled men, both severely autistic and dependent on the council’s care services.

The council agreed to comply with the ruling and said they would not be appealing the court’s ruling.

The Isle of Wight is not the first local authority whose attempt to cut disability services has been considered unlawful. In May 2011 Birmingham City Council was also found to have failed to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act.