Calls for urgent action to fix 'inflexible' Universal Credit system
Thousands of vulnerable people across Staffordshire and Cheshire are struggling to apply for and maintain payments
Figures from The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute show around 1.3 million people are experiencing high levels of distress when applying for Universal Credit. The group have called for urgent action to fix design flaws'' in the system.
Simon Harris is the Chief Executive of the Citizen's Advice Bureau across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. He said:
"One of the issues we've come across quite often is that people whose circumstances are different or difficult - like people who have serious health issues, or language problems are struggling to be accommodated by a system that's actually inflexible in many ways.
"One of the recurring themes has been the difficulty that people with mental health issues have had negotiating benefits - with physical disability, physical injury, it seems to be better understood - there needs to be some major sort of changes made to Universal Credit to accommodate that, and there needs to be greater flexibility.
"There is insufficient regard given to those people who cannot engage online. As for some people, they lack the skills and knowledge and confidence to do it. In other cases, they lack the equipment or they lack the connectivity, there ought to be the scope within universal credit for it to be more flexible.
"It doesn't really accommodate people with all these sorts of needs. It's very much based on a set of quite basic assumptions about people's capability about what they can do.
"We frequently advise people that they should check their online journal - but for many people, particularly with mental health issues, even a routine tasks like that can be really difficult.
"An older couple tried to go online and made the claim successfully online, but were having real problems maintaining it online as they tried to get it changed to a non digital claim. DWP refused, we then had to take it through an escalation route before we could actually get someone from DWP to understand the situation."
More than half (54%) of UK adults who have had mental health problems said they have severe difficulties in using the phone, often leading to panic attacks, heart palpitations and spiralling anxiety.
This is according to The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute who claim the universal system is causing high levels of stress.
When asked if streamlining the system would be the solution, Simon said:
"Streamlining - if simplified, making it easier to claim, making it simpler and making it more accessible then yes, we definitely support that. But if streamlining means putting more of it online, automating more of it, making it in some way for many people less accessible then, No, we wouldn't.