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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

Case manager management

Rosie W
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Welfare rights service - Northumberland County Council

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Starting to wonder if there is any oversight of what case managers do. Increasingly we get responses which are just made up. Latest example “you can’t request a reconsideration until the sanction has ended”.

We know it’s wrong, how many claimants without access to advice would?

Daphne
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rightsnet writer / editor

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Happy to collate any examples of journal messages like this and send up via stakeholders - if you can email them to me (with client details if poss so they can see it for themselves) I will raise them all

Rosie W
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Welfare rights service - Northumberland County Council

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Daphne - 02 July 2024 10:45 AM

Happy to collate any examples of journal messages like this and send up via stakeholders - if you can email them to me (with client details if poss so they can see it for themselves) I will raise them all

Thanks Daphne - I think we can certainly do this for our corporate appointee clients; probably not for others as it would be difficult to get consent to disclose details as we are a second tier service. Could add them as anonymous examples?

I’ll speak to colleagues and see if we can get something together.

Dan Manville
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Greater Manchester Law Centre

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I’ve just spotted this. Cases such as Rosie’s highlight why a brief pre action letter can be a useful and cathartic tool. Highlighting staff shortcomings via the legal team might be an effective way of eliciting change…

Rosie W
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Welfare rights service - Northumberland County Council

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Dan Manville - 18 July 2024 12:09 PM

I’ve just spotted this. Cases such as Rosie’s highlight why a brief pre action letter can be a useful and cathartic tool. Highlighting staff shortcomings via the legal team might be an effective way of eliciting change…

Thanks Dan. In that case all it took was a snippy message on the journal and it was sent to a DM that day and the decision to overturn the sanction came within a week.

I take your point that although that produced a satisfactory result it does nothing to address the culture in UC of case managers making stuff up and effectively making decisions themselves.

Andyp5 Citizens Advice Bridport & District
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Citizens Advice Bridport & District

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Daphne - 02 July 2024 10:45 AM

Happy to collate any examples of journal messages like this and send up via stakeholders - if you can email them to me (with client details if poss so they can see it for themselves) I will raise them all

Daphne thanks for your help with our sanctioned client i.e. encouraging DWP to deal with MR and make a decision (they did it in record time).

So we can help client appeal the sanction.

For wider afield social policy reasons - her NHS MH counselling service assessment findings included. ‘My main problem is my anxiety. This is triggered by the job centre’.