Scottish Social Security Consortium

Minutes of meeting 21 February 2007

Present:
Judith Paterson - Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland (Chair)
Angela Toal - Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland
Jo McLaughlin - The Action Group
Carol Young - Scottish Low Pay Unit
John Wilson - Scottish Low Pay Unit
Collette Cummins - RNIB
Lorna Bernard - HAIN
Alice MacAlister - One Parent Families Scotland
Marion Gell - Contact a Family
Carol Patterson - Welfare Rights Officers Forum
Lindsay Isaacs - CAS (minute-taker)

Eleanor Clark - Communities Scotland (guest speaker)

Apologies
Karen Hamilton - Future Plus Skills Support

Welcome
Judith Paterson welcomed everyone to the meeting and introduced Eleanor Clarke from Communities Scotland.

National Standards for Information and Advice Providers

Background
Eleanor provided the group with some background about the Scottish Executive's National Standards for information and advice providers, launched in November 2006. The scheme is of relevance to the group as it covers housing, money and welfare rights advice. It is therefore worth considering what the potential impact of the scheme might be for members of the SSSC.

In 1995, national standards were launched by Scottish Homes for all providers of housing advice. These were reviewed in May 2000 to reflect legislative changes such as the statutory duty on local authorities to prevent homelessness, and it was decided that the standards should be expanded to include other areas of advice. This resulted in a commitment to providing standards across the advice sector, and work on this commenced in 2003.

A working group was established which included CAS, Shelter, MAS, CPAG in Scotland and various local authorities. This group looked at a number of factors, such as the different ways that advice was delivered across sectors and advisers' training needs. Competences were developed through as series of workshops with current advisers that looked at what the advisers needed to know, what skills they needed, what access to resources was required etc - in other words, they were developed from real-life existing practice. Approximately 20 organisations then trialled the competences.

The Standards
The Standards that have been developed describe three different levels of provision:

1. Information and advice
2. Case work
3. Advocacy and representation, e.g. in court or tribunals

It is possible to offer advice to different levels in different areas eg an organisation might provide type 1 money advice but type 3 welfare rights advice. Each broad subject area is divided into sub-topics, of which there are 32 for welfare rights.

The organisation wanting to be accredited starts by stipulating the topics on which it provides advice and the level to which it wants to be accredited. The organisation is then examined by external auditors to assess if it complies with Standards relevant to that level and those topics of advice giving. The organisation has two separate audits: a management process audit, conducted by a process auditor, which looks at the organisation's management structure and systems and a quality of advice audit conducted by peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are drawn from the same level of advice work as that which they are assessing ie level three work (advocacy and representation) can only be assessed by someone engaged in this level of work.

The management audit and quality of advice audit are assessed together to determine if the organisation can be accredited. The organisation can be awarded a pass, conditional pass, or fail.

Discussion
The group asked how many organisations had been accredited. Eleanor stated that, by the end of March 2007, approximately 26 organisations (local authorities and voluntary sector) had been accredited. However, these are all housing and money advice providers as no welfare rights teams have yet undergone the accreditation process. There is a cost for going through the process and this might be putting some organisations off.

The group queried if the National Standards were going to become compulsory, or if not undertaking the process might have an impact on attracting funding. Eleanor noted that there is no intention at the moment to make them compulsory. However, individual service level agreements with local authorities might start to stipulate accreditation as a requirement. What happens if the audit process identifies a service that is poor? Do the auditors have a duty to report? Eleanor commented that all the audit summary reports are published on the Communities Scotland website.

The accreditation lasts for three years, and there is a mid-term validation process with a far lighter touch.

The cost of accreditation varies according to the number of topics the organisation wants to be audited on, and costs are approximately as follows:

• < five topics - £2,000
• 5-15 topics - £4,500
• 16-30 topics - £6,000
• Over 30 topics - over £6,000

The Scottish Executive has currently given some money to Communities Scotland to allow them to part-fund the costs of going through the process. Eleanor also noted that the cost is less for citizens advice bureaux as they already have to undergo a fairly stringent internal audit. An equivalence test has been done on this, and established that the CAB service audit is sufficient to 'passport' bureaux through the process audit, although they still have to undergo the external National Standards quality of advice audit.

If organisations wish to start the accreditation process, Communities Scotland can assist them to develop a work plan, draw up an appropriate time line etc. a 'masterclass' is then provided for those proceeding to audit. These support services are provided by Homepoint free of charge.

Minutes of the previous meeting
Minutes of the meeting held on 20 November 2006 were agreed as an accurate record.

Matters arising
Judith Paterson noted that the Welfare Reform Bill is currently in the House of Lords. Due to limited resources, the Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform had decided to back relevant amendments being put forward by other organisations eg CPAG and Citizens Advice England & Wales.

The Bill has gone through the Commons and the Lords, and is currently in the Grand Committee of the Lords. No amendments have been accepted so far.

Information Exchange
Marion Gell from Contact a Family raised an issue of concern relating to DLA and CTC. If a child is in receipt of the severe disability element of DLA, this should result in an increased CTC award. However, the DWP is failing to pass this information onto HMRC (or possibly HMRC is receiving the information but not acting on it) and thus CAF has seen a number of cases of large underpayments of CTC because the correct elements are not in payment. A related issue is that these TC elements can only be backdated for three months, unless HMRC was informed at the outset that a DLA claim had been made (some DLA decisions can take far longer than three months). This is particularly unfair, as if the child elements were still being paid through IS, they could be automatically be backdated beyond three months. It was agreed that Lindsay would raise this issue at the next meeting of the Tax Credit Consultation Group.

Lorna Bernard from HAIN raised an issue regarding overpayments and recovery laws. She noted that she was escalating a case in which a disputed overpayment had gone to tribunal and, meanwhile, deductions had continued even though they should not have (as the tribunal had not yet decided if an overpayment had occurred or if it was recoverable). The tribunal then concluded that the overpayment was not recoverable. However, the DWP is claiming that they cannot pay back any overpayments that were taken erroneously as there is a proven loss to the public purse (ie there was an overpayment, even if it is theoretically not recoverable).

Judith Paterson from CPAG in Scotland said CPAG had had recent correspondence with the DWP's debt management team, who believe they can go to court to pursue repayment of overpayments even after a decision being reached that an overpayment is unrecoverable. Judith noted that we should all be alert to this and identify any possible test cases for CPAG. Lorna also noted that there is anew line on DWP letters which states that "we can seek repayment through common law", which seems to be frightening many clients.

Lindsay alerted the group to a pilot that has been launched to speed up DLA payments by allowing GPs to send information relating to DLA and AA claims electronically. The pilot - the first of its kind in the UK - is being trialled by 344 GPs in 94 practices in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Forth Valley.

Lindsay also informed the group that the Social Security Advisory Committee had contacted her to see if Bureaux were still reporting problems relating to Jobseeker's Allowance and ad-hoc workers. As bureaux were no longer reporting this as an issue, Lindsay had agreed to ask the members of the SSSC. Lorna noted that she had heard of one client who was an ad-hoc worker who was having problems accessing JSA, and agreed to try and get the case details from the relevant adviser. No other attendees had come across this issue recently.

Carol Young from SLPU reported that she and Peter Kelly from Poverty Alliance had been involved in providing evidence to the recent Westminster enquiry into poverty in Scotland. They had focused on the recovery of tax credit overpayments, stigma attached to claiming benefits, welfare reform and the adequacy of benefit levels.

Judith reported that the tax credit project has started to issue email bulletins. It was agreed that Lindsay would send the updated SSSC mailing list to Judith in relation to this.

Topics for future meetings

Possible future topics were suggested:

• Changes to the CSA and the impact of these changes (for sometime in the future)
• Someone from HMRC to answer a list of technical questions

AOB
Lindsay reported that Abi Bremner has now left CAS to take up a permanent position with Capability Scotland.

Back to the Scottish Social Security Consortium main page

For more information contact:
Judith Paterson
Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland,
Unit 9, Ladywell
94 Duke Street,
Glasgow G4 0UW
0141 552 3303
email jpaterson@cpagscotland.org.uk

Abigail Bremner
Citizens Advice Scotland
Spectrum House
2 Powderhall Road
Edinburgh EH7 4GB
0131 550 1000
email bremnera@cas.org.uk