Social Fund Budget (S13)
Cuts
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Futures Fund
This cut may not get implemented in full because there are proposals to include the service within the futures fund. Please visit the futures fund proposal to find out more.
Description
Proposal to withdraw Social Fund would lead to the withdrawal of two elements of support.
Crisis Support and Community Support.
Crisis Support aims to prevent immediate deterioration to an applicant’s health by providing access to food, heating and limited supplies of clothing and baby consumables. If the full social fund budget was withdrawn in total this would leave no safety net for individuals or families and is likely to lead to an increase in rough sleepers, increase cases for child protection because of neglect, potential increase in acquisitive crime, increased risk to health including mental health. In rare cases travel costs are permitted but only where individuals are fleeing domestic violence or other issues.
The Social Fund has been tightly managed by the Housing Revenues and Benefit team and discretion is used as necessary to operate the scheme in a cost effective manner. The Social Fund Policy has recently been reviewed to tighten criteria and to link to prevention measures . The devolved Social Fund has been operating since April 2013 and in 2014/15 1,401 applications were received for the Crisis Fund element of which 20% were granted.
The majority of these claims are for single people and in particular those aged between 20-30 years of age.
Community Support
Community support aims to help applicants remain in the community or move back into the community after a period in supported or unsettled accommodation including hospital or prison. It provides a basic package of furniture and household goods including bed, bedding, white goods and furniture. This funding provides the mechanisms to reduce demand on other services. Not providing this support would lead to, increased demand for children and young people to be taken into care and increased demand on supported accommodation as people will be unable to afford to move on, increased issues with resettlement of offenders and individuals who have been in long term care settings.
The Community Care element is largely focussed on those receiving treatment, care or support because they are disabled, seriously ill, homeless, pregnant or have some other support need. Packages are focussed on individual cases and the discretion used by housing benefit staff has been crucial in ensuring that the resource is focussed on those most in need but also focussed to reduce the demand on other services including DBC and those of health.
Link
Keywords: voluntary sector VCS
Related FAQs
What will be the impact on voluntary organisations such as Citizen’s Advice, Age UK, GADD? What happens if they close?
We fully support the work of our voluntary sector partners and hope to continue to work with them in the future. However, the financial situation is such that the Council is not able to continue funding these organisations at current levels. The likely impact of the budget proposals on these organisations is currently being identified, following discussions with the organisations most affected. We hope that they are able to continue their work by looking at where they can make further cost and efficiency savings, but we appreciate that in some cases this may not be possible and it will therefore mean a reduction in the support they can offer to the residents of Darlington. It could lead to the closure of organisations if they are unable to make the necessary changes for them to be sustainable, which will be very regrettable. We want to avoid this happening and we will support organisations making grant applications where we can. We will also be undertaking work to understand the impact of any reductions in service on individuals accessing them.
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