SCIE media releases 2005

SCIE calls for benefits system change to enable service users to contribute to service improvement and regeneration

18 October 2005

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) has today launched a report calling for a review of the benefits system to enable service users to be contribute to their communities and to the improvement of the services they use.

The report, Contributing on equal terms: Service user involvement in the benefits system, looks at the problems faced by service users on benefits who want to influence the shape of support services and help improve their communities. .

Written by Shaping Our Lives, the national service user organisation, the report shows that the Government's commitments to social inclusion, active citizenship and the increased involvement of service users, are being undermined by the operation of the benefits system.

Drawing on the experiences of individual service users, user-led organisations and service providers, the report calls for more flexibility within the benefits system to ensure that service users are encouraged and enabled to participate more widely.

Currently, the rules on paying people who are receiving benefits make payments to service users difficult and sometimes impossible. Service users who want to make a contribution, live in fear of losing their benefits.

Indeed, some have to go through lengthy and time-consuming procedures to ensure their benefits are repaid or not reduced.

Even those who are not paid worry that, by taking part in meetings, they might be seen as being fit to work and will lose their benefits, athough the skills and confidence they gain can ultimately help them back into paid employment

The report is particularly significant in light of the government's recent announcements about moving people who receive the Incapacity Benefit back into work.

As service users highlighted, 'the benefits system is. keeping people dependent, excluding and stigmatising them, rather than helping them to launch themselves back into their communities and, where appropriate, the world of work'.

Chair of Shaping Our Lives and one of the authors of the report, Professor Peter Beresford, said that the situation was untenable.

"The government wants people' to be active citizens. The findings from this study make clear that long term service users want to be active citizens. Let's see change in benefits policy, practice and if necessary legislation, to make this possible."

The report was commissioned by then Minister for Community, Dr Stephen Ladyman in 2003.

SCIE is continuing a programme of work on good practice in payments for service users. It is developing a telephone helpline to advise service users and carers on payment for work done and how this might affect the benefits they receive. SCIE will also produce guidance on paying service users.

Media contact

Annie Goss | Communications Assistant | T: 020 7089 7117 | Email: annie.goss@scie.org.uk