Financial inclusion – York commentary archive site

We have set aside up to £170,000 as part of our financial inclusion work for this year. We are working alongside Citizen’s Advice York, Advice York and South Yorkshire Credit Union to help ensure residents have the knowledge to manage their finances effectively.

All four organisations are also committed to better coordination of advice services across the city. They plan to ensure that advice-givers and those offering help better understand the welfare benefits system and opportunities are explored to reduce general living expenses.

Last year, we awarded grants of over £180,000 to nine projects that help improve financial inclusion for residents in the city. These were for a range of schemes including the provision of specialist debt advice, improving the employability of people aged over 50, work at GP surgeries to offer welfare advice support to patients (freeing up doctors to focus on clinical issues), providing advice in community based locations to support residents’ financial capability and providing support on Universal Credit. Organisations who need further information about applying should contact the council by email at financial.inclusion@york.gov.uk.

Councillor Carol Runciman, executive member for Adult Social Care and Health, who has responsibility for financial inclusion, said: “Our commitment to supporting vulnerable residents and promoting financial inclusion reflects one of the council’s key priorities to ensure we have a prosperous city for all.

“Past grants to support projects has helped to make a positive difference to the lives of many people across the city.

I am very happy that we have been able to continue to invest money in this important area of work and I hope that we get the same level of interest that we had last year”

£250,000 is set to be invested in helping less well-off members of the community in the Westfield, Clifton, Guildhall, Heworth and Hull Road wards. The wards are among the lowest ranked using a national “Index of Multiple Deprivation” (IMD). The project will last for two years.

In some ways, the project will seek to emulate the Kingsway Project, of the last decade, which did achieve some success in getting residents to apply for the benefits to which they were entitled. Paradoxically a low score in the IMD is influenced by the number of claimants – meaning that the more successful a benefits campaign is, the lower the score will be!

Some neighbourhoods – such as Chapelfields – have relatively small numbers of retired people and are less likely to be regarded as “deprived” using the national definitions. However, the Council is, rightly, intending to roll out its project across the whole of the Westfield ward

A key target for any project like this must be to get more people into work. In KIngsway this proved to be difficult because of the large proportion of elderly and retired people in the area. These days the high employment level in the City means that there are a lot of jobs around so progress may be possible for the long term unemployed.

The Council has produced a summary of the key indicators of “deprivation” (below). Many of these are unlikely to show a measurable improvement over just a couple of years (life expectancy being one example).

Instead of setting measurable firm targets, the Council says, “Social Return on Investment produces a description of how a project creates value and a ratio that states how much social value in £s is created for every £ of investment”.

This is the management speak equivalent of Voodoo.