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if providers put you on a generalised, inappropriate
course that won’t get you a job at the end of it, then
they won’t get paid.’ One delegate told the session how
his volunteering role had engaged him in a wide range
of activities, including responsibility for commissioning.
‘But now I’m being sent on a course to be skilled up
for stacking shelves in a supermarket,’ he said.
More money would be spent on the ‘most
vulnerable’ than had been the case before, Andrew
Selous said, partly using the voluntary and ‘not for
dividend’ sectors, and once more via a payment by
results approach. ‘They will only get paid if they get
enough people back into work – otherwise it won’t be
sustainable for them.’ Although payment by results was
relatively new to the UK, it had been running in
Delaware in the US with ‘extremely good outcomes’, he
said. ‘It’s not as though it hasn’t been looked at
elsewhere.’
There were 2.2m people on incapacity benefit, he
said, 39 per cent of whom had been receiving it for ten
years, and 1.6m of them would now be assessed for
their suitability for work. ‘There are no targets, but our
goal is to get as may people as possible into work. We
know that the right sort of work is a positive thing.’
The benefits system itself would also be
reformed, with the new universal credit combining a
wide range of existing benefits, alongside measures
to make sure that people did not lose out financially
when they did enter employment. ‘At the moment
we’re effectively taxing the poorest people at the
highest rate – a benefits system that makes people
worse off when they go into work is a nonsense.’
The government would also be working with
private landlords to reduce rents and increasing
discretionary funds to local authorities, and the 16-
hour and 30-hour rules for tax credits would also be
abolished. The government was ‘very keen’ to
encourage both volunteering and work experience for
people on Jobseekers Allowance, he told the
conference, and the ‘massive amount of fraud and
error in the system’ would also be addressed.
Head of legal services and deputy director of
Release, Niamh Eastwood, told delegates that the
issue of welfare reform was at the heart of her
clients’ concerns. ‘There’s a failure to recognise that
people who use drugs problematically have
difficulties getting work,’ she said.
Her organisation had been very worried by the
previous government’s mandatory treatment
proposals, and had lobbied hard to make sure that
new benefits introduced by the coalition did not
effectively label people as drug users. ‘As long as it
remains a conditionality, and is not the name of the
benefit, we are reasonably happy,’ she said. It was,
however, the wider reform agenda that most
concerned Release.
The real problem with universal credits lay with
the issue of conditionality, she stressed. ‘People who
use drugs problematically are at the highest risk of
sanctions of anyone in the system, and we need to
strongly guard against people being sanctioned for
what is effectively a health issue.’ If conditionality
was ‘roped into’ the benefits regime, the risk was
that all benefits – not just housing benefit – could
end up being stopped, with disastrous results.
Conditionality would be ‘proportionate and
compassionate’, Andrew Selous stated – ‘there will
be no conditionality for those for whom it would be
inappropriate’ – and it would also be gradual and
personalised. However, failure to take a reasonable
job offer would lead to sanctions. ‘The welfare
system is a contract,’ he said. ‘It is reasonable to
expect people to engage.’
Caps on housing benefit, however, would mean
people having to move out of the areas where they
lived, said Niamh Eastwood. ‘This fails to recognise
the importance of family networks, historical
networks, treatment networks and service user group
networks.’ The drug strategy’s employment aims also
failed to recognise the barriers that existed as a
result of stigma, long periods of unemployment, lack
of skills, lack of formal education and lack of
confidence, she said, as well as all of the issues
around opioid substitution therapy – ‘there is a real
judgement associated with being on a prescription’.
The attitudes of employers, including the risks that
they perceived, also continued to be a serious hurdle.
‘There’s a view of people who use drugs as being
untrustworthy and incompetent, but it’s simply not
the case and it is not borne out by the evidence.’
There were interventions to address this, she
stressed, including the legal – such as through the
Disability Discrimination Act, the Rehabilitation of
Offenders Act and employment legislations – as well
as through incentives for employers. ‘Once they’ve
employed someone with a history of drug use they’re
much more likely to open their doors in the future.’
However it was criminalisation itself that remained
the biggest obstacle that drug users faced, she said.
There were growing moves towards decriminalisation
across the world, with ‘overwhelming evidence’ of
positive outcomes in Portugal following its
government’s decriminalisation of drugs for personal
use (
DDN
, 11 October 2010, page 6), as well as a
number of experiments elsewhere. ‘This is not just a
loony left-wing liberal organisation like Release
calling for this. It’s time for governments to be brave
and stop criminalising what is effectively a health
issue and an education issue.’
DDN
7 March 2011 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 9
Seize the day |
Welfare
reform
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
‘People who use drugs
problematically are at
the highest risk of sanc-
tions... and we need to
strongly guard against
people being sanctioned
for what is effectively a
health issue.’
Niamh Eastwood
‘There will be no
conditionality for those
for whom it would be
inappropriate...
The welfare system
is a contract, it is
reasonable to expect
people to engage.’
Andrew Selous MP
EAL