Newcastle Welfare Rights Service - about us

Background

Newcastle Welfare Rights Service (NWRS) was first set up in 1974. Our aim both then and now is to use a co-ordinated variety of welfare rights strategies to try to improve the lives of those who live in Newcastle especially those who are disabled, ill, elderly, with children, on a low income or in work. NWRS is part of the Adult Services Directorate and our work is closely tied into that of the Directorate. We offer both advice and support to service users as well as to those who work within the care services and the rest of the Council. Our work is described in detail in our annual progress reports and plan. This is in addition to the business plan for the Adult Services Directorate. The service has the Community Legal Services General Help with Casework Quality Mark.

Management, Policy and Practice

NWRS is managed as part of the Adult Services section but it contributes to work across the full spectrum of social care activities, including services to children and families. Currently the Service is managed by the Adult Services Directorate's Head of Resources and three Senior Welfare Rights Officers. The Senior Welfare Rights Officers have responsibility for specific staff and parts of the Service. There is also a Lead Caseworker. This post aims to promote and ensure good advice provision. The rest of the Service consists of Welfare Rights Officers based in different projects. Management are responsible for the welfare rights budget. This involves dealing with both the mainstream budget as well as some outside funding. External funding is subject to re-negotiation and is important as parts of the Service depend on it. The benefits and tax credit system is subject to rapid and regular change and the Service takes responsibility for advising the Directorate and Elected Members on the impact of changes on the Directorate's work. NWRS has a history of innovative development. Current initiatives are described more fully below. Inevitably management time has to be invested in achieving those changes. Equally importantly the Service cannot develop in isolation and the service has a track record of extensive partnership working both within the City Council and with outside agencies. Some of these arrangements are set up as specific service level agreements whilst others involve looser alliances and collective endeavours.

Benefits and debt advice

Advice and assistance with benefits and debt is provided by NWRS in a variety of ways.

Welfare Rights advice and assistance is available to anyone who needs it across the City through an advice network. NWRS is part of this network. Details of the network are listed in the ‘Where to get Advice in Newcastle’ booklet produced by NWRS. This booklet is widely distributed throughout the Directorate and many other points in the city. We also try to sign post people who live outside the city to suitable agencies.
Social workers and other professionals often deal with welfare rights problems which arise in the course of their ongoing case work. In order to help them with those issues, NWRS provides training, information and briefings, as well as a specialist telephone advice line.
Social workers and other professionals can make referrals direct to NWRS for clients and service users needing benefits advice and help.
Carers can access benefits and tax credit help. This is done via the City Council's carers’ assessment, through the Newcastle Carers Centre or by self referral.
People with enduring mental health problems are also provided with access to the Service through a variety of settings or by referral from a Social Worker or mental health support worker.
We provide specialist services for:

People with HIV / AIDS
The terminally ill
People from the black and minority ethnic community.

Our Money Matters Unit provides specialist help for people with serious multiple debt.

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Take-up campaigns

Newcastle City Council has a long history of encouraging take-up of social security benefits as part of its efforts to combat poverty and social exclusion amongst its residents. The reasons why people fail to claim their full entitlement to benefits are many and complicated but range from misunderstandings, lack of knowledge to complexity of the system, delays and poor administration of the benefit system. It is widely acknowledged that low take-up is a greater problem amongst the most vulnerable and that improving peoples’ incomes helps them to maintain successful lives in the community.
The Welfare Rights Service undertakes this wider ranging work because of its important preventative effects. NWRS works in many different ways to encourage the take up of benefits and tax credits. This work starts with general information strategies which depend heavily on people identifying themselves as possible claimants and taking action. A simple example would be leaflet displays in public buildings or articles in public information. Work continues up to highly targeted strategies where individuals are approached directly and offered a full range of help with claiming including representation.

Examples of take-up work include:-

People aged 60 and over - Using Housing Benefit data to identify people over the age of 60 years who appeared to be entitled to Income Support/Pension Credit but who are not claiming it. This involved working with both the DWP and the council's Housing Benefits Section. Information was also provided by NWRS to the local press.
Carers – the service uses Housing Benefit records to identify older carers and assists them to claim Carers Allowance. Two campaigns resulted in annual gains of £1.25 million and arrears of £275,000.
Blind people and deaf people - In 1994, a landmark House of Lords ruling meant that blind and visually impaired people and deaf people were much more likely to get Disability Living Allowance. Following this, the Welfare Rights Service – with involvement from the Adult Services’ Sensory Support team - organised 2 distinct take up campaigns for each group. Most advice services in the city took part in the campaign for deaf people, which involved making a British Sign Language video and producing a comprehensive ‘claim pack’. To get a copy see 'campaign pack'. The campaign for blind people involved support from a local charity, which helped to fund a stand alone project.
Results: By Spring 1999 the campaign for deaf people had raised on average between £40 and £61 per week extra benefit for each person it had helped (over £200,000 a year). £79,478 arrears of benefit was also obtained. At March 2000, £663,000 per annum (£12,750 per week) had been raised in unclaimed benefit for blind people. This is about £41 per week per person.
A process was set up for the Sensory Support Team to refer each person who newly registers as blind or deaf to the Welfare Rights Service for a benefits check. More details on these two campaigns.
Tax Credits - In December 2000 NWRS organised for Newcastle City Council's Chief Executive to write to every employee explaining the rules on entitlement to tax credits and encouraging people to make claims. The Welfare Rights Service staffed a telephone helpline for a time limited period. As at March 2001 the City Council were administering payments to an additional 62 staff who had made new claims in the intervening 3 months. Perhaps more importantly, however, the value of payments being made to all staff had almost doubled. The local free paper also carried a story provided by NWRS aimed at reinforcing the message to claim.
The Primary Care Take up Team was funded by the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF) for three years. It gained over £7 million for clients by offering benefit checks to over 75 years olds via GP surgeries.
Since January 2005 the NRF also funded a “Quids for Kids” worker who has helped claim benefits for children with disabilities and their families. The success of this project is reflected in the fact that a specialist carers post for children came into being in April 2006.
Take-up Summit 2009. Newcastle Welfare Rights organised a benefit take up summit in 2009. See the report and results.

Training, information and supporting professionals

The service also produces benefit and debt information. Much of this work is done through the Training, Information and Publicity Unit. Their work includes these website pages, articles in the Council's Citylife newspaper, etc. Here are some of the many examples. We also give second tier support to professionals via an advice line and training and information.

Service Development

NWRS is committed to ongoing improvements in the service it provides. This is carried out by developing new take-up opportunities as part of the Newcastle Welfare Rights Service strategic plan. Some of the recent initiatives are targeted at specific groups such as carers, the elderly, people with mental health problems. Various targetting methods are being used to try to ensure these groups get all the benefits they are entitled to.

Good practice - quality service

Many methods are used to try to ensure and improve the quality of our service. The Community Legal Service has set certain standards but these can be built on and other methods can be employed. To this end, the service created the role of “Lead Caseworker” in early 2003. This role includes the improvement of monthly practice meetings, arranging speakers and the discussion of live practice matters and organising outside trainers e.g. Human Rights and welfare benefits, and meeting of regional advisers. It also includes the sharing of up to date information and practice matters. Other activities include setting up an induction scheme and support for new starters and staff development etc. Another way we have been working on to improve the quality of service is in case recording. We are aiming to use an IT-based system that will also help with providing statistics to help improve our delivery and targeting of service.