The Guardian reports on the expected deluge in demand for crisis help, which is leading a number of councils to invest unconventional measures for helping those most at need.
Patrick Butler writes:
Cuts next year to the social fund, which provides emergency aid to vulnerable people, mean that from April 2013 many councils will no longer be able to provide cash help to applicants. Instead they will offer "in kind" support such as referring clients to food banks and issuing electronic food vouchers.
Crisis loans – short-term financial aid for people in dire need – cost £230m in 2009-2010, but the coalition has devolved responsibility for the loans in England to councils, while simultaneously cutting the pot back to 2005 levels.
This means that the days of simply being handed the money you need to make it to the next pay day are over.
Instead, poor people should look forward to being treated as though they can't be trusted with money.
Butler writes:
Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council in London is proposing to issue credit-card style vouchers – or "gift cards" – in lieu of crisis loans, enabling recipients to buy items at certain shops, likely to be big retailers such as Tesco, Argos and Sainsbury's. Some councils will put blocks on the cards preventing the purchase of alcohol and cigarettes. . .
Households who would previously have been eligible for a community care cash grant will be instead offered vouchers for reconditioned beds, cookers and fridges redeemable at furniture recycling charities.
But it is the plans to refer crisis loan applicants to food banks that will cause most controversy.
Crisis loans distributed in the form of gift cards which can only be redeemed in Tesco is the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, and giving poor people money while preventing them from spending it on alcohol and cigarettes is straight out of the Victorian age.
If you can help it, probably best to try and not be poor for a while.
