Essential Living Fund

If you have been sanctioned you may find you have fifteen days to manage without food. This is if you have used up your three Food Bank, food vouchers, in a twelve month period. Different Food Banks may have different rules.

Another option is to apply for an Essential Living Fund grant. The scheme is quick, efficient and a pre-payed card can be collected from a Citizens Advice Centre. The scheme may operate a different way in other parts of the country. Spending has to be on essential items and you MUST keep the receipts and ideally download a expenses sheet from Microsoft Excel. 

You cannot spend on items like cigarettes, alcohol, nightclubs or massage parlours. So it would not be much user to Charlie Sheen. You can check your balance over the telephone or via a website.

Disadvantages of the scheme:

• JCP advisors are not telling claimants about it.
• The letter with the Debit Card PIN number - the number on the clear plastic are so faint you can barely read them.  60% of people over forty need reading spectacles.

Overall the scheme is a God-send.

Ironically however, when you look at all the actions that have to be taken following a sanction - if there is an appeal - and the necessity to provide emergency funding, we wonder if these sanctions, that are given without [proper] Good Cause are worth doing?

When you look at all the work and management time costed out, plus the fact this all distracts serious jobseekers - is it really worth it in costs to the public purse? We think not?

Why jobseekers should be sanctioned for a minor infraction, when the DWP has 48 weeks to offer redress to a jobseeker, when it is clearly their mistake. This is then followed by a Tribunal when approximately 2/3rds of these are found in the Claimant favour.

The ABC wants to see interest paid on tribunal awards where economic loss has been suffered and a discretionary payment devised to act as a deterrent to the DWP to stop them dragging our cases which can be solved immediately.

We want to see in time that an ABC regional representative touring on a circuit can meet with local JCP offices and discuss case files on Claimants so matters can be resolved, before they go into the costly appeals system, saving taxpayers a small fortune.

We want to see targets set to reduce the number of appeals lost by the DWP to below 5%.