Hello

I am supporting 19 Mencap residents with learning difficulties in supported housing all of whom are recieveing verifcations.We are finding it difficult to meet the deadlines and it seems to be impossible to speak to anyone on the verification team directly. It has all resulted in a lot of work, interuptions and loss of revenue, and loads of anxiety for the organisation and the residents. Is there anyway to have the addresses known to the verifcation team so they would not suspend and cancel benefit. Or to gain access to the team so we could work together and verify the residents together.

Well the answers to your two questions are "yes" and "yes". Verification is an administrative exercise, it's not the law. Suspension ought to be reserved for cases where a genuine question of entitlement has arisen - not just because someone wasn't in for a visit or did not send a form back in time.

Have you tried an official approach to the benefits manager? Or maybe tap up the councillor(s) whose responsibilities include benefits administration. The current situation does not sound that efficient from their end either.

Verification is indeed an admin process introduced originally to combat HB/CTB fraud, and has no legal standing. Having said that, when used sensibly it is a commonsense way of checking out details of income and capital when claims are made. We ask for up to three months bank statements, which usually show payments of benefit income into at least one account, as well as verifying capital.

I assume that in the cases you are talking about, this is verification of existing claims already in payment? If so, we would be flagging these type of clients up on each of the claims as requiring a home visit from a visiting officer. If we, as WR advisers came across such a case where there wasn't a flag on the claim, we would ensure that it was put on.

Brent must be aware that these clients have problems claiming and maintaining benefit entitlement: they must also be aware that they have support workers, and to merely write directly to the customers threatening suspension of benefit is really not acceptable.

Are these clients not on Income support as long term claimants - or do some of them have part time work that causes the problem? Where they are on I/S then a RATS check would show this, and therefore there would be no need to verify anything.

OK, so there are regulations and procedures etc, but these must be applied with commonsense and some thought for your client base.

In cases like these, whilst it may not be a legal requirement, LA's should make efforts to work with Social workers: we certainly try to, as it makes our life easier as well as that of the customer.
By the way, does Brent not have a welfare rights team who you could liaise with? Could they not get the message across to the Benefits section about the effect that additional stress has on your clients......

Am I right to assume the problem about verification is when these people move in?

So to warn you that they will, in future, recieve what is call in the housing benefit trade "a postal intervention form" tiggered by the SAFE system (security against fraud error)
The computer decides when to ask if there has been "any change in circustances". This is a problem for people in supported housing I have noticed because it is unpredictable when they will get these forms.