Posts

Showing posts from January, 2022

28.01.22

A tiring week, not helped by the local council's approach to enforcement of council tax. They automatically throw cases across to the bailiffs (sorry, 'enforcement agents'), even when the resident in question's vulnerabilities are undoubtedly known to the council. The problem is, the people in the council who know about these vulnerabilities are in a different department. It should be basic administrative competence to have different parts of a local authority share information about residents. So why does the council tax enforcement team not know that Resident X, who has lived for decades in a council property, has mental health issues that a bailiff visit could greatly worsen? It's all arse about face. Rather than the council sharing information internally, or doing any sort of investigation, they send in the bailiffs and rely on that client approaching an advice agency who then informs the council. It is cruel, and it inevitably means ill people suffer. Perhaps n

21.01.22

 "You're more like a social worker, aren't you? And more use." So says one of my clients this week, and it makes my day. To be honest, this week I've really felt like one - I've helped a client set up a bank account, called the pension service to make sure a panicked client's request for his pension to be paid fortnightly has gone through, and checked up on a couple of others to see if they've managed to set up their agreed council tax repayments and so on. This is the sort of service that my clients (and many others) need. But unfortunately it's not what you can expect with most advice services. The reason I'm able to do this is that my organisation is free of the choking bureaucracy of the Money and Pensions Service, which expects advisers to see eight new clients a week and write each of them a tailored letter that can run to 40 or more pages. Try fitting in any casework around that without working well beyond your contracted hours. And if y

14.01.22

One of the hardest parts of debt advice - and probably any advice - is people's desperation. Especially when there isn't a great deal you can do. This week, bad news comes about a client's Discretionary Housing Payment application. The stated reason for the rejection is that the client has not been paying the full £1,000 of his UC Housing Element towards his rent - which is because his total UC award is £1,250 (due to the benefit cap and deductions), and, well, he needs to eat. I'm hopeful that he will eventually get PIP and the UC support group element, which will make a big difference. But until that indeterminate point, there's not much I can do apart from refer him for housing advice. And that's difficult to know when someone is sobbing down the phone and begging you to tell him what to do now. Elsewhere, we had the usual array of council departments not speaking to one another and clients deciding to keep buckling under the weight of their debt rather than

Happy New Year

A relatively quiet week to start 2022. The local council have actually replied to some of my queries over the Christmas period, although unfortunately they haven't given all the information I need. I look forward to a further weeks-long wait before they cough up anything further. Also irritating is the imbalance of expectations. It's not a problem for me to provide documents within 10 working days, but when I've waited 30 days+ for some simple, factual information to come back from them, it grates. The first appointment of the year is a surprise one: an older man with alcohol dependency, who I helped a bit last year. I'd left him a voicemail to remind him of his telephone assessment for the local substance misuse team, and he'd misunderstood and thought he had an appointment with me. I sit with him as he calls them, and it's a good job I do, because he struggles on the phone and was getting frustrated at the lengthy, repetitive list of clinical questions about h