As part of refugee week Advice NI ran an advice session covering everything you need to know about UK government schemes available to Ukrainian nationals. Both for Ukrainian nationals aiming to arrive to NI and for those already living in NI.
Advice NI, the independent advice charity, has identified serious systemic failures affecting Universal Credit claimants, in particular Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) claimants moving from ESA to Universal Credit (UC).
It’s been a busy few months on the advice line. People concerned with the Welfare Mitigations Cliff Edge due at the end of March 2020. Something that could affect up to 35,000 households in Northern Ireland. See below for some recent cases from the Welfare Reform Team.
It has been a busy year for us all in the advice sector with very little prospect of any easement in workload. Indeed, if some of the predictions regarding the impact of Brexit occur, then things are likely to get more difficult for many of our already hard-pressed families and communities.
A client phoned the Independent Welfare Reform Helpline for advice on a PIP decision that was taking a long time. The client had migrated from DLA to PIP and in doing so had asked for a paper assessment.
The independent welfare changes Helpline has seen an increase in calls from clients who have due to their vulnerability, inadvertently made a claim for Universal Credit which was not in their best interests.
We are now facing a similar recession to 2008, however this time personal credit is out of control in UK & NI, the Banks and lending sector seem to have learned nothing from their previous mistakes.
