mike shermer
Welfare Benefits Officer, Kings Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council, Kings l
Member since 23rd Jan 2004
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RE: Social Fund
Thu 19-Jul-07 03:35 PM |
At present what they are doing done this neck of the woods is moving SF officers from CCG's to crisis loans and back again depending on demand - they are also using the call centre to collect the information required for a crisis loan, then sending it through to the DM's - the theory is that the DM can spend more time looking at cases, less time answering telephones ....
They have said that they recognise they have a problem - and this is only a short term fix. They are saying that the situation has been brought about by a 25 to 30% increase in Crisis loan applications, which they hadn't planned for, and clearly hadn't budgeted for.
What really concerns a lot of us now is the back log of CCG's which are essential to those wanting to move into independent living from a institutional setting, or lodgings etc. Thye are having to sign a lease for properties which is totally devoid of furniture and fittings - so they cannot move in, cannot therefore get HB/CTB - therefore start to accumalate arrears from day one.
It therefore follows that someone somewhere needs to extract more than a digit or two and get the SF sorted out for the medium to long term, because the vulnerable clients aren't going to go away....and and JCP problems of budget, staffing etc are the result of their own policies over the past two to three years - it didn't just happen overnight...
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