Written evidence from Newcastle University [UCW0035]
Introduction
This document was produced by the research stream of the UKRI funded Social Justice through the Digital Economy Network+, also known as Not-Equal Network+ (Grant number: EP/R044929/1). The Not-Equal Network+ aims to bring together academic communities and organisations from the third sector, industry and public sector to understand, explore and respond to issues of social justice in the Digital Economy. This document reports key findings from three distinct case studies from UKRI funded projects, part of the Not-Equal Network+ that investigated barriers and hurdles in accessing essential digital services.
The case studies are:
i) Welfare Claimant Study – delivered as part of the UKRI funded Cyber Security Cartographies Project (CYSECA), that sets out to understand the informal networks that influence and support access to digital services;
ii) UKRI funded People Powered Algorithms that explores ways to increase transparency in the relationships between policy, technology and the digital experience;
iii) UKRI funded Not-Equal Network+ Community Consultation that investigated fairness and social justice in the digitalisation of services in partnership with a third sector organisation and their service users.
A summary of the key findings regarding the 5 week wait from across the case studies are reported below.
The Not-Equal Network+ is led by Newcastle University’s Open Lab Dr Clara Crivellaro (Principal Investigator) in partnership with Royal Holloway University of London Prof Lizzy Coles-Kemp (Co-investigator), Swansea University Prof Alan Dix (Co-investigator) and Sussex University Prof Ann Light.
Summary of key findings
A summary of key findings from 3 case studies: (I) The welfare research stream of the Cyber Security Cartographies program works to (ii) The Powered Algorithms project and (iii) The Not-Equal Network+ Community consultation.
Rather than boosting ‘incentives’ to work, the 5 week wait can exacerbate negative feelings towards the welfare system. The digital delivery of the system and lack of communication during the 5 week wait furthers feelings of isolation and desperation and an increased sense of lack of control. Without positive interactions with service providers to counter this, claimant experiences of UC can be overwhelmingly negative.
3rd sector organisations play an essential part in alleviating isolation and provide digital skills and access during and beyond the 5 week wait. However, 3rd sector service providers and community groups can feel inadequate to provide sustainable or scalable support due to the magnitude of the issues of users, partially as a result of the digital delivery of UC. Insufficient 3rd sector government funding as well as closure of libraries and loss of funds that used to support initiative such as electronic village, increases barriers to accessing UC, putting further strain on these voluntary organisations.
The 5 week wait can cause individuals’ finances to fall into arrears leading to long term financial hardship and in some cases homelessness. This inevitably causes stress, frustration and can result in insomnia. The UC system appears to overlook the complex needs of some claimants many of whom may struggle with financial management. This may have contributed to the increase in food banks, and oversubscribed demand for their services as claimants face financial desperation.
Lack of digital skills and access paired with misinformation about how systems work and a complex digital system can prolong the wait for support for claimants beyond 5 weeks. The system can be particularly difficult to navigate for those with learning disabilities. Work coaches unable to offer sufficient application support can leave claimants waiting up to 3 weeks for an appointment to support the application process in addition to the 5 weeks waiting time.
Claimants can perceive the 5 week wait with suspicion – as a part broader set of punishment tactics based on the assumption that claimants are dishonest and that the system is therefore designed to put off claimants. This distrust of UC also leaves claimants in fear of disciplinary measures when many may wish to find employment but find themselves limited in their work capabilities by chronic health problems or disabilities.
Welfare Claimant Study – Cyber Security Cartographies Project (CYSECA) – Part of the Not-Equal Network+
Introduction
This study was produced in the welfare research stream of the EPSRC funded project Cyber Security Cartographies. The focus of this research was to better understand the informal kin and friendship networks that influence and support the ways in which people access digital services. The findings in this report was produced from an auto-ethnographic diary study to gain deeper insights into the lived experiences of those using digital services to claim welfare. The diary study captured the job-seeking activities and related administration that constituted the main day to day activities. Participants were recruited following an ethnographic study in a community centre in the North East of England that ran dedicated sessions to support job seeking and welfare claiming. Seven people agreed to take part in the diary study.
Research Design
Information gathering kits were used to explore and understand the everyday public and hidden routines and emotions of welfare claimants interactions with the UK welfare system, both online and offline. Participants were given a seven-day information gathering kit that included: an audio- recorder, disposable camera (24 photos), blank storyboard template with a prompt that asked participants to visualise their average day, a map of their local area and the UK, two postcards (one that asked each participant what their future looked like and one that asked them to draw a map of their life), a seven-day diary that asked them to draw and describe their daily interactions with the welfare services and with community support centres, and a sheet for articulating the things that made them feel secure and insecure. The variety of data gathering media in the diary pack allowed participants to choose a preferred form of expression, ensuring they did not feel hampered or self-conscious when expressing themselves. The data was analysed using thematic analysis and these themes were reviewed by the community The data presented a rich understanding of the participants everyday experience with the welfare system and it was in this data that references to social isolation emerged. The findings from this study have been revisited below and the implications of the five week wait period outlined in the context of these findings.
Potential Implications of the Five Week Wait Period
Participants noted in their diaries that they felt isolated within the welfare system itself, partly because of the fear of falling on the wrong side of the welfare rules and partly because of the lack of contact with the welfare system. The five week wait period can contribute to this sense of isolation. Participants were overwhelmingly negative about interactions with the welfare system and the five-week waiting period at the start of the claiming process can re-enforce this negative feeling. This perception often arose from frustration that resulted in a sense of being isolated and depressed; a feeling that was exacerbated by a lack of money which meant less opportunities to relieve those feelings of frustration and social isolation. This sense of frustration was engendered through experiences of the interactions with the welfare services and ranged from unhelpful “unsympathetic with peoples issues” to hostile “they belittle people and make them uncomfortable.”
A lack of internet access, confidence and digital know-how, resulted in participants going to community centres to find support. It is at these community centres that claimants can also find support during the five week wait period. Both the social isolation and the isolation within the welfare system is also broken by finding community groups and other parts of civil society able to support interaction. These groups are popular because “All[services] available for free with no stigma attached”. This results in increases of confidence and agency “New found self confidence”. Such groups offer more than services, the participants also talked about such groups offering friendship and also routine through regular sessions and tea breaks. Being a part of such a group is not simply about being cared for but also about being able to care for others “I share my knowledge with other to find jobs to apply for”. Part of this knowledge-sharing is knowledge about how to respond to the five week wait period and community support during this initial period of isolation.
Conclusion
Not only does the five week wait period need to be looked at as a feature of the welfare system in its own right but also as a means of amplifying existing negative feelings about the system. If claimants are to have the confidence to access employment and achieve independence from the welfare state, the barriers to a positive experience need to be removed.
Notes about the Researchers
The original research was conducted by Lizzie Coles-Kemp and Makayla Lewis as part of the CySeCa research team at Royal Holloway University of London. A write-up of the original research can be found at: Jensen, RB, Coles-Kemp, L, Wendt, N & Lewis, M 2019, Digital Liminalities: Understanding Isolated Communities on the Edge. in ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI'20. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376137
People Powered Algorithms – A UKRI funded project that is part of the Not-Equal network
Introduction
The following findings are produced from research that is part of the UKRI funded People Powered Algorithms project (Grant number: EP/R033382/1). The main objective of this project is to develop ways of making the relationships between policy, technology and the digital experience more transparent enabling easier identification of issues related to justice, fairness and equality. The findings presented in this document are produced from research conducted in the project’s welfare research stream.
Approach to research
The research took place in food banks and community groups over a month-long period, exploring the way that UC’s digital-by-default design impacts communities and how community groups respond with their own ‘interfaces.’ By interfaces, this refers to the way that voluntary organisations ‘process’ people, parallel to the digital interfaces of official welfare sites from the government. This indicates how support is organised in practical terms, such as the ways that donations are chosen and distributed, as well as the methods utilised to provide guidance. Unlike a digital interface, voluntary organisations must come face-to-face with clients at each step of the process, and so have first-hand experience of dealing with people who are reacting to Universal Credit.
The research utilised an ethnographic approach, which involves immersing oneself in the spaces one is trying to understand, and conducting a mixture of participant observation and informal interviews to gather evidence. The researcher spent time in the following places:
Wimbledon and Worcester food bank: Trussell Trust food banks that deliver emergency food to people in the community three days a week. The researcher volunteered in the Worcester food bank twice: assisting in organising the donations and shadowing staff as they spoke to clients. In the Wimbledon food bank, the researcher volunteered twice to three times a week for four weeks, organising the food parcels and stock room. In this time, the researcher came into contact with approximately twenty volunteers, and had informal conversations whilst they work. The researcher had in-depth discussions with the two food bank managers, who explained the set-up of the food bank. In terms of clients, the researcher observed - at a distance - approximately twenty people across both sites, and had conversations with approximately five separate people awaiting food parcels.
Southwark Know Your Rights: a community hub located in Bermondsey that offers free and impartial advice to people who are on Universal Credit, related to form filling, benefit appeals, training opportunities, CV developing and improving IT skills for clients. This is a satellite group of the London Unemployed Strategies, formed by the unemployed and their supporters, including the voluntary sector and trades unionists. The researcher attended a ‘Know Your Rights’ session, which involved approximately twelve people on Universal Credit, who discussed their recent experiences of receiving UC and problems they were having with the JobCentre, for example. The researcher listened to the session, and asked the participants questions about the process of Universal Credit.
The Lighthouse Project: a community hub in Woking run by volunteers that offers a range of creative projects to support vulnerable people living in poverty, ranging from painting classes to relaxation sessions. The researcher attended a ‘Nurture’ session, which was led by a yoga instructor to help the participants understand the importance of sleep, and to learn breathing techniques to assist in relaxation.
The researcher kept detailed notes of each visit to a workshop or volunteering session, and conducted a thematic analysis of the findings. This involves interrogating the points that arose in the field work, and categorizing them into different themes, then creating a pattern amongst the findings.
Finding 1: Spiralling Finances
A consistent theme that arose in the research was that the five-week wait causes a knock-on effect for claimants, wherein they are unable to ‘catch up’ with their finances. Subsequently, their lives spiral out of control. This leaves people at the mercy of community groups and food banks, who are forced into acting as ‘unofficial’ sites of welfare. The volunteers at food banks highlighted the five-week wait as a contributing factor towards the steep rise in food banks, and suggested that people feel abandoned by the government. For instance, at the Worcester food bank, volunteers discussed the case of a person who was made homeless due to the five-week wait because it had caused them to fall behind on rental payments. When the person visited the food bank for an emergency parcel, they were sleeping in a tent near the riverside. In the following quote, the project manager of the Wimbledon Food bank explained how the wait for payment can cause service user’s lives to become unmanageable:
[...] so, the Trussell Trust started this up in, so we came on board with the Trussell Trust in 2011, the 79th food bank, we are now in the UK, we have over 429 Trussell Trust food banks...that’s more McDonalds than there are in the UK. But then you’ve got soup kitchens and everything else, which isn’t the same thing. What we do is that from the initial outlay, clients can come three times in six months. Now, that was before Universal Credit said that families can live on nothing for five weeks. We do and can keep to the three times when people are dealing with that but when people have literally got nothing coming in because your child benefit gets suspended, your tax credits get suspended, your housing gets suspended, and then they pay you a month after you start. Everything goes into arrears into a month and you have all your people who are used to regular payment get on your back, so you never start out on a plus, you start off on a minus and it becomes a headache. Not for the month, but for going forward because you’re minus now.
As such, claimants of Universal Credit feel immense stress and frustration caused by what they understand as “delay tactics” for payment. Indeed, the Wimbledon project manager highlighted a mother who has received packages from the food bank, who “survives off £1.50 a week and who lives in one room with her three children.” She said that this is because “poverty pays,” referring to the ways that, once a person is behind on payments, charges are incurred and finances become uncontrollable.
Finding 2: Digital Hurdles
Most notably, the digital hurdles faced by claimants mean that the five-week wait could often turn out to be much longer. By removing the five-week wait, the government will alleviate some of the stress and anxiety felt by claimants during the application process. This is because people living in poverty are unlikely to have access to WiFi, creating an obvious block to the first stage of applying to Universal Credit. As the Wimbledon food bank manager noted: “so, when the bills are racking up, WiFi is the first to go.” Likewise, at the Know Your Rights session, the group emphasised the stress of applying to UC online, with one man referring to many people’s situation as “IT poverty,” both in terms of a lack of finances and a lack of skills. They highlighted that the website has no signposting (for both the application and for people to speak to a member of the DWP), and one man with extreme dyslexia explained that he found it impossible to navigate. Indeed, many of the group felt that they had not got the right skills to apply online, and that the system is purposefully set up to lock them out of their entitlements. When I asked if it is better when they are face-to-face with a DWP staff member, they unanimously answered ‘no,’ because the jobcentre worker is reading the same screen as the claimant, and they often “don’t have the knowledge” to properly advise. The participants highlighted that often the jobcentre worker will refer the claimant to an appointment in three weeks time with a member of staff who will be able to assist with their online application, meaning a potential three week delay on payment, on top of the five week wait already built into the process. This blind-leading-the-blind approach led the claimants to ask “if they can’t do it, how are we expected to?” In the researcher’s conversations with the Wimbledon food bank manager, she explained that she often had to help food bank users with their UC applications, and highlighted the difficulty that many people have in navigating the website:
Yeh, so I have a for a lot of people, it is their first time claiming benefits, and for people who have already held jobs for like five - ten years to find getting onto the Universal Credit system hard, how does that make sense? So, they’ve already had jobs, they’ve already had PAYE, they’ve already had bank accounts. Why would a system freeze someone from getting into it because they don’t remember a certain direct debit from their account or something like that? That is like mind-blowing, you know, I’m in a situation where I’ve not had to go onto Universal Credit, but actually if you asked me to do it today, I am sure it will be a very hard process. You know, like, there’s no bragging in this but I’ve done a degree: I’ve done a dissertation, essays, I’ve done A-Levels and GCSEs. If I know that I’m going to have a hard time, can you imagine someone who, you know, considers themselves not as educated. That’s not fair.
As such, the findings suggest that the online interface of Universal Credit is clunky and complicated, particularly for people who have learning difficulties or are not IT literate. This creates a delay in applications, which in turn, adds to the length of time a claimant may have to wait for payment.
Finding 3: Under Suspicion
The current process of UC makes claimants feel under suspicion, with one member of the Know Your Rights session stating: “it feels like the first question they ask you is: when did you first start lying to us?” and that claimants have to constantly “prove themselves,” particularly when living with ill-health and/or a disability. The five-week wait is understood by volunteers and claimants as part of a broader set of punishment tactics, built on the premise that welfare service users are dishonest and must be ‘put off’ applying for Universal Credit. All of the participant’s emphasised that they “want to work,” but are either living with a chronic health condition and/or a disability that makes this impossible, or are in low-paid work and need Universal Credit to subsidise their income. Rather than boosting ‘incentives’ to work, the five-week wait pushes vulnerable people to the margins of society, furthering feelings of isolation and desperation. Indeed, when discussing food banks and community kitchens at Know Your Rights, participants described how degrading it felt to have food given to you that has been chosen by somebody else. For instance, one woman with a physical disability was forced to queue for a number of hours at a soup kitchen, an experience she found “dehumanizing,” but she did not vocalise her distress because she is “supposed to be grateful.” Similarly, another man reflected on when he had been given out-of-date tins from the food bank, but having no other option, “of course” he ate them. This reflects the desperate circumstances that people are forced into through a lack of income, which could be alleviated by removing the five-week wait for payment. Such uncertainty has huge consequences on people’s mental and physical health: for example, when participating in a workshop on ‘getting better sleep’ at The Lighthouse Project with women, the majority of which were on Universal Credit due to fleeing a violent domestic situation, the group spoke openly about their insomnia due to the immense stress caused by a lack of money. One woman simply stated that she “didn’t sleep.”
Concluding notes
Whilst the research has focused on the digital make-up of Universal Credit and its impact, a recurring theme throughout the field work was how the application process and subsequent tasks to secure payment feel cruel and unnecessary to claimants, and rather than simplifying welfare, create complexity by pushing vulnerable individuals into crisis. Undoubtedly, the five-week wait has increased the need for food banks and community kitchens in the UK, and as the Wimbledon food bank’s project manager stated, positioned them as a reluctant “fourth emergency service.” By removing the five-week wait for payment, this would alleviate the strain placed on claimants, and counterbalance some of the difficulties caused by the digitalisation of welfare.
Notes on The Researcher
Amelia Morris is a Research Fellow at Royal Holloway (University of London), working as part of the cross-disciplinary project People-Powered Algorithms for Desirable Social Outcomes. The project explores the relationship between state and citizen, and asks questions about how the increasingly ‘digital by default’ mode of governance has impacted people’s lives, focusing on the ways that algorithmic learning is utilised to make decisions about welfare. Amelia is the lead researcher in the section of the project that interrogates the digital set-up of Universal Credit, seeking to make sense of the ways it has affected claimants’ lives.
Not-Equal Network+ Community Consultation
Introduction
At the start its programme, the Not-Equal Network+ worked with partner organisations and their service users to begin mapping the issues they saw relevant to their day-to-day lives and collectively explore what social justice and fairness in technological innovation might actually mean. It is during this initial phase that we contacted Karen Wood, the manager of two charities— Parker Trust and Pallion Action Group, based in Sunderland, a small city in the North East of England, with whom Lizzie had collaborated previously. Parker Trust and Pallion Action Group (PAG) are community-based charities providing a range of support services designed to enable people living in Pallion and West Sunderland to participate in society as independent, mature and responsible individuals. Pallion Action Group was founded in1993 by a group of local residents wishing to take action in response to issues experienced in their local community, today both charities develop programmes of activities aiming to develop skills, advance in education and relieve unemployment.
Approach to Research
The evidence presented in this document comes from a case study that Not-Equal conducted with Karen Wood and the two charities that she manages. The case study was structured in three parts:
Pre-study design: identifying a particular community group and observing interactions between community group members and essential services such as welfare, housing and employment. From this observational work, an engagement theme was developed titled “Computer Says No”. This theme focused on the difficulties and barriers to accessing services from essential service providers when the interaction was digitally mediated.
Workshops: Two workshops with a combined total of 14 participants were conducted to further explore these barriers and difficulties.
Follow-up interviews: Two interviews were conducted to reflect with the community group gatekeeper on the nature of researcher-participant interaction in this context and its value to the community in question.
Findings
The two workshops present a coherent picture of barriers and hurdles to engaging with essential services. Whilst digital technologies are regarded as opening up access in some ways and providing additional resources to support access, a number of hurdles are clearly listed:
Both workshops identified that digital access to essential services had accessibility benefits but also had a potentially detrimental effect on a) people’s sense of control over decisions that relate to their well-being b) the relationship between the individual and the essential service provider. The positive effects are also contingent on being able to access the welfare system – as one participant stated: “If the only existing social security systems is an online one but free Wi-Fi in the city is not given, then what we are contending with is a system that is fundamentally unfair from the outset. If there is no data about you, you simply don’t exist.”
These factors have a direct effect on the experience of the five-week wait because the five-week wait can increase the sense of lack of control and the sense of being under suspicion for wrong-doing without positive interactions with the service to counter this. In the interview with Karen Wood, she noted how the UC systems appears to be build on two key assumptions: (i) that people are able to budget for themselves, and (ii) that one size fits all and people do not lead complex lives or have complex needs. The five week period in this sense can have significant negative consequences for the life of claimants, such as not being able to eat. “People are being told: Go to foodbanks! Yes, go to the oversubscribed foodbanks, which are mostly ran by volunteers because someone sitting in a lovely comfy office, who has never been skint in their life, has decided that everyone can wait up to 5 weeks to be paid. Universal credit was built on assumptions! Assumption that one size fits all!
“We are told people need to learn to budget – once again fantastic advice – so why does universal credit then give payments putting the claimant immediately in debt? And what about those most vulnerable, those with addictions or learning disabilities who seriously cannot manage their own money? There are not enough resources in place to help these people.
The interview with Karen Wood also reflected how third sector organisations such as Pallion Action Group and Parker Trust have to step in and support during the five week wait and other interruptions to welfare payments. In Karen’s view these interruptions are amplified by the digital delivery of welfare systems. Much of Karen’s work is responsive, it’s made to be responsive in ways that are not sustainable or difficult to scale because of the magnitude of the issues brought about by digital innovation. Furthermore, the third sector receives relatively small funds from the government and yet there appear to be an expectation that the third sector will be able to “sort things out” and “clean out the mess”. “We are told people need to get online – how? Government cuts have seen libraries close and electronic villages lose the funding to keep them open. Youth and community organisations are running at full pelt, trying to mop up the mess that has been created trying to deliver additional services – relying on volunteers and staff.
Concluding notes
Difficulties to access the systems means that often claimants are effectively waiting much more than 5 week for a payment from the time they were without income. The five week wait period can add significant strains and hardship to the lives of claimants. It can also add significant strains to third sectors organisations who are there to support them. If claimants need to be in a position where they can achieve independence from the welfare state, then their wellbeing needs to be assured.
Note on the Researchers
Clara Crivellaro is Senior Research Fellow at Newcastle University’s Open Lab and Principal Investigator of the UKRI EPSRC Social Justice through the Digital Economy Network+, also known as Not-Equal Network+, (Grant number: EP/R044929/1). Lizzie Coles-Kemp is professor of Security at Royal Holloway College of London and co-investigator on the UKRI EPSRC Social Justice through the Digital Economy Network+
April 2020