Tag Archives: welfare

Single parents in benefits storm – Gingerbread’s data

With rising prices on one side and falling benefits on the other, have single parents been disproportionately hit by welfare reforms? Gingerbread, the charity supporting lone parents, believes so.

Their online survey ‘Paying the price:single parents in the age of austerity (pdf)’ asked a number of questions about meeting rising living costs, with 591 single parents replying between July and September 2013.

HMI Welfare have obtained the online survey data results here  Continue reading Single parents in benefits storm – Gingerbread’s data

Useful links to Sept 27: Hurt from the cuts; Loan policy supports unwise lending

Useful links to Sept 16th: reassess mental illness; axe bedroom tax; the new poor; CPAG update

These are some welfare links we found interesting during the second week of September.

What were Ian Duncan Smith’s ‘welfare reforms’ really about?. Guardian, Sue Marsh, spokeswoman and author of Diary of a Benefit Scrounger says the reforms are frightening the most vulnerable.

Hard evidence: are migrants draining the welfare system?. The Conversation. The evidence is to the contrary.

Patrick Kennedy: ‘Speak up’ for mental illness. Politico, A call to reassess mental injuries caused in military combat.

UN housing expert’s call to axe bedroom tax ‘a disgrace’ – senior Tory. Guardian, Bedroom tax. Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps takes issue with the UN special rapporteur’s views of the bedroom tax.

Ed Milliband to pledge crackdown on zero-contracts . BBC. In his address to the TUC, Ed Milliband will set out plans to tackle the spread of zero-hour contracts.

Child Poverty Action Group update: The reality of striving and surviving on benefits. Video with single parent, A Girl called Jack.

Europe could have up to 25 million ‘new poor’ if austerity drags on .Oxfam. The report states that damage caused by austerity measures will take at least two decades to reverse.

Useful links to August 30th: living costs crisis; intern death; DWP zero hours; modern workers

These are some welfare links we found interesting during the second two weeks of August.

Welfare-related links for December 21st through January 25th

These are the welfare-related links we’ve been looking at between December 21st and January 25th:

  • Management in Practice – GPs could help save £190m in sick pay – Launching in 2014, the advisory service will allow GPs to identify employees who need support as well as issuing 'fit notes'. Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform said: "Long-term sickness absence is a burden to business, to the taxpayer and to the thousands of people who get trapped on benefits when they could actually work.
  • The cost of government: what does the new transactions data really tell us? | News | guardian.co.uk – And the worst offender? The massive Department for Work and Pensions, which is Britain's biggest spending government department and administers benefits. So, for instance we have no idea how much it costs to process each of the 40m Jobseeker's allowance signing ons or to administer the benefit's 3.4m claims. The Department is responsible for 48,704,000 transactions in the high volume list alone – and we don't know the cost of any of them.
  • Reasons to be fearful: Oakley & Policy Exchange, foxes in the benefits coop | skwalker1964 – To keep this post to a readable length, I won’t go into detail on some of the other proposals that Mr Oakley would like to see implemented, or wild opinions that he holds, but will just list some of them:

    All assistance for unemployed people to find work provided by private/charitable providers
    Time-limiting unemployment benefits
    Cutting regional pay to fund infrastructure spending – thereby penalising those who are already disadvantaged in order to fund growth-measures, rather than taxing the wealthiest
    Selling public housing in expensive areas to private owners, forcing social tenants out of ‘desirable’ areas
    Claiming benefits leads to criminality
    Re-distributing income to low-paid people is a bad idea, because it ‘does nothing to encourage progression and self-sufficiency‘.

  • Request Initiative » Eleven work and pensions civil servants sacked for using Twitter or Facebook – The 11 sacked officials are among 116 DWP employees to have faced disciplinary action for blogging and social networking since January 2009, according to figures revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.
  • What is George Osborne doing to benefits? | Society | guardian.co.uk – Let's imagine someone receives £100 a month, all of which is spent on goods and services (domestic heating, food, bills, etc). The current inflation rate is 2.7%, which means in a year's time buying the exact same things would cost £102.70. Under the previous system, this is what benefits would've risen to. But with the changes, they would now only rise to £101 – leaving the recipient £1.70 worse off. Given the changes will last for at least three years, this represents a cut in income of between 3% to 6%, depending what happens with inflation. In reality, the impact could be even worse, as research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests low-income households experience a higher inflation rate than richer ones.