Friday 9 October 2020

Black History Month: Citizens Advice's benefits policy work in the 1980's highlights the impact of welfare reform on BAME clients

For Black History Month, we are highlighting the great work done at a national level by Citizens Advice in the past.  The following article was originally published in 2018 by Sue Edwards of Citizens Advice national office.



In the 1980's we started to do a lot of policy work on benefits - it's hard to believe this now, but at the time, we had hardly done any before. This was a time when the Government was considering wide-spread reform of the means-tested benefits system to speed up processing of claims and save money.  In 1983, a new housing benefit scheme was introduced, causing a great number of people to seek advice from us.  London CAB wrote a report in 1987 about long delays experienced by supplementary benefit claimants in getting their claims assessed by London DHSS offices.  And we responded to the consultations on benefit reform, lobbied Parliament during the passage of the 1986 Social Security Bill through Parliament and monitored its implementation in 1988.

The 1980's were also a time when NACAB (the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux) was actively trying to meet the needs of BAME clients and attract BAME volunteers and workers to the service.  In 1986, we adopted and implemented an anti-racism policy for the first time. This seems to have had an impact on the Information Retrieval/Policy Comment Team at NACAB too - because our responses to the various papers on social security reform and evidence reports on benefits start to mention our concerns about the specific impact of the reforms on black people.

For example, our response to the Green Paper in 1985 highlights our concerns about the proposals to tighten up the presence test in the benefits system which would affect BAME clients the most.  Kings Cross CAB pointed out that the local Bangladeshi community would be affected as many go to Bangladesh to visit family every 2 - 3 years.  They often stay out of the UK for at least 3 months. 

In 1990 we published research about the impact of the discretionary social fund one year after implementation.  This was based on a survey of over 1,500 CAB clients who sought advice about the social fund.  The research found that 10% of the sample were from BAME backgrounds - a higher proportion than in the general UK population at the time.  We highlighted our evidence that people whose first language was not  English were particularly disadvantaged when applying to the social fund for a community care grant, as they were less likely to present a good case as to why they needed a grant.  We recommended that the social fund application form should be simplified and both the form and explanatory leaflets should be provided in appropriate community languages.