Welfare and work: the Community Allowance
I came across the CREATE consortium’s Community Allowance proposal recently. The idea is to make it easier for people who are dependent on benefits to carry out work that needs doing in the community, or to be able to declare and be recognised for work they already do. Examples of such work include: care for elderly friends, relatives and neighbours; childcare; odd jobs; cleaning up parks and streets; caretaker job;, lollipop ladies (and gents); and working for local charities. Community Allowance does several things:
It takes day-to-day welfare claim-management out of the hands of the claimant, freeing him or her to spend energies on finding and doing locally-based work. Claimants’ housing benefits are guaranteed and income support cannot be suddenly removed. Rather, a trusted third-sector organisation already working in the community takes on the responsibility of channelling work the claimant’s way, and recording how much work he or she does. This organisation takes care of liaising with benefits agencies. What the claimant gets is the opportunity to be a little better off through doing some work, and to improve his or her community (all work he or she can do under the scheme must be of some benefit to the local community). But perhaps most important, he or she can simply get used to working – building up confidence or perhaps just the idea that the claimant is someone who can work.
What a brilliant idea! One obstacle to long-term claimants finding work is the risk they run in losing substantial benefits, losses that could leave them homeless. For the marginal income-gains they would get from low-paid work such risks will appear too great and employment may actually be eschewed. This is a perfectly rational decision many of us would make in the same situation.
Another problem is that maintaining a benefits claim often becomes an esteem-destroying game where both claimant and Jobcentre staff know they are just ticking boxes. This is a degrading and disheartening experience that ‘institutionalises’ claimants and officials alike. It breeds cynicism and hopelessness. What’s more, the system is designed so that it harasses people into finding work (so-called ‘conditionality’). But in fact, respite from bureaucratic harassment might be more beneficial, allowing claimants to actually do some work.
This policy idea fits with our Social Brain research. On the one hand it would work through individual rational choices – it makes it rational for claimants to undertake work because they feel financially secure. On the other hand, it gives claimants the opportunity to experience working environments – that is, it allows them simply to get used to ‘the feel’ of work, building habits through behaviours, so that changed attitudes might follow. This is the right way to do things: too much policy works on the myth that people change their behaviour after assessing information and changing attitudes first. In fact, often it is attitudes that follow behaviour.
Finally, the Community Allowance builds up people’s stakes in where they live – making a connection between work and community benefit, as well as building positive and valuable social relationships. Of course, like any initiative of this sort there will be hitches and abuses. But we already spend the money on benefits and it’s not as if the present system is free from abuse. Better, surely, to encounter problems trying to do something positive for claimants and the communities in which they live?
Comments
9 Comments on Welfare and work: the Community Allowance
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henry on
Tue, 12th Jan 2010 9:20 am
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Sam McLean on
Wed, 13th Jan 2010 2:55 am
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Matt Grist on
Wed, 13th Jan 2010 5:10 am
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Matt Grist on
Wed, 13th Jan 2010 5:15 am
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Sam McLean on
Wed, 13th Jan 2010 5:53 am
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Will on
Sat, 16th Jan 2010 9:38 am
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Matt Grist on
Mon, 18th Jan 2010 12:20 am
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Rob on
Thu, 28th Jan 2010 12:40 pm
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Matt Grist on
Tue, 2nd Feb 2010 2:36 am
when he spoke at the 2020/RSA earlier last year, James Purnell (back when he was still in government) talked really well about intelligent conditionality. As i understood it, he was talking about a system that would recognise other types of contributions to society in return for benefit entitlements, not just working in the formal economy which, as you say, can be really unrewarding and demoralising for some people. this approach is fine, but it doesnt try to understand what people already do, or how collective motivation might affect behaviour etc. So i share your optimism about the type of approach you write about!
Great post Matt.
I have working through this idea for a while, I really support this idea/policy proposal partly for the reasons you outline. It also fits with the work we will be doing in Pboro where we are exploring different ways of creating spaces for cultivating civic behaviour and social solidarity.
I did some research on the experience of ‘benefit fraudsters’ for DWP a couple of years back. I put forward this policy idea to them. While most were obviously worried about what ‘conditionality’ actually means they were quite keen.
Astute of them because conditionality is the key thing! What happens when people refuse to get involved?
Thanks Sam. I suppose the idea of this proposal is that pointless threats be removed from a person’s life for a while, and the resulting ‘threat holiday’ used to build up the capacity for work. If someone has been out of work for a long time then the threat of benefit withdrawal becomes the condition that person meets through constant claim management. But this does not push him or her into actually get a job. Moreover, the threat is so scary (ultimately resulting in homelessness) that it is quite rational for a person to spend their time trying to keep their claim rather than gain work. Plus, the kind of work people are likely to get is going to be unreliable so there is considerable risk involved in entering employment.
I would want to see pilots of the Community Allowance allied with benefit and tax reforms so that if unemployed people take on part-time work or even full-time work there is more financial gain in it for them. But as you say, the CA relies on people wanting to take part – I can’t see it being mandatory, but then I could see it being taken up by quite a few people.
Yeah I would want to see the CA used to get people into work as well as just recognise work that people already do. But getting them into work might be better served by them simply having the opportunity to do some without the threat of benefit withdrawal.
And as I understand it the payments are not benefits for work – they are wages, which seems better to me, as it connects to the real economy beyond state schemes. Purnell’s idea sounds too much like expanding the scope of benefits (no bad thing necessarily) rather than trying to get people into work.
Hi Matt,
I agree with what you say. I am particularly keen on the idea of their being a route from CA to employment and providing wages alongside benefits.
Conditionality will not work with a heavy hand. But I do think the question of something like CA being mandatory depends on how CA works in practice and who it is targeted at. I wouldn’t personally say never.
If it is a way of engendering particular social norms around the value of working and community action, which also leaves people finanically better off as a result, I think the argument against it being mandatory becomes a weaker one.
But one crucial issue – one size will not fit all. Having come from a family background that Marx would have described as ‘lumpenproletarian’ I am sceptical that a mandatory approach would work with families on multi-generational unemployment.
Beware of schemes that have to be “useful” to the “community” – mainstream employers tend not to regard these as real experience, which means that once somebody’s term is up they’re back where they started. Better would be a system that allowed claimants to do any work at all – be it a shift in a pub, a spot of windowcleaning, a venture into roadside sport-sock retail or whatever is available – without losing benefits POUND FOR POUND. Even a 50% taper would be a significant improvement on the system at present, which requires people to look for work and then punishes them for actually doing any.
Hi Will,
Yes that’s a fair point. As far as I understand it the CA people have realised that there is a quite a lot of money moving around the public and third sector economies for work to be done. So instead of say a contract company bringing a caretaker in for a school, someone on the CA can take on this work. So it would be ‘proper’ work rather than a completely contrived work scheme.
However, I agree – why not widen the scheme to include any work? I can see no reason why not.
Best, Matt
Aren’t we talking about a co-operative here?
There is a project somewhere in the Rhondda Valley which exchanges hours worked for goods and services.
In the documentary I saw about it, on the Community Channel if I remember, they seemed to be doing fine.
Naturally, they operate out of one of the local Miner’s Institutes. They have a centre for the comunity. Not everywhere does. Especially in an age of property-worship.
Hi Rob, sorry for not approving your comment sooner, I’ve been away.
I don’t think CA is paid out through a co-operative, although I suppose it could be. I think the idea is just that there is a lot of work around, bits and bobs of community-centred work, that people on the dole can’t do because it’s not financially viable for them to give up the security of benefits. The idea, as I understand it, is that instead of using the threat of benefit withdrawal to stop people cheating the dole, things are turned around: the security of not having your benefits withdrawn is used to give you a chance to get used to working and build up experience, as well as be a bit better off.
Totally agree that communities that have kept some kind of institutions that allow for co-operation to solve shared problems are much healthier.
Matt
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