By Carolina Gottardo-Director of the Latin
American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) AdviceUK member
I recently attended an interesting
conference about the Advice sector in London, which included the participation
of a representative from the Cabinet Office.
She presented the idea of a transitional
fund that will be introduced for the struggling sector and with a calm voice said
that ‘the Government wants to reduce the demand for advice services’. Which is
what we all want. Laudable so far, until she said that they want to do this
through the introduction of the Universal Credit System. The audience, more
than 100 people, mainly from Law Centres, independent advisers, second tier organisations
and NGOs working with groups with different protected characteristics such as
myself, could not stay still. You could hear murmuring all around.
The Government has to be joking to say
this. Do they really believe that the introduction of the Universal Credit will
reduce demand? If they genuinely believe this, then, they must be living in a
world far away from those that struggle to make ends meet. If they don’t believe
it, then it shows that they couldn’t care less. What is worse? I haven’t made
up my mind yet.
Let me tell you how reality is for the
people that need advice and will suffer from the introduction of the Universal
credit and changes in the welfare system and for those who provide advice to
them…
We at the Latin American Women’s Rights
Service (LAWRS), struggle to cope with increasing demand for our advice services,
but at the same time, we are struggling to keep our funding and continue
providing our services. Many women come to our drop-in very early on every
Monday morning in order to queue for language and culturally friendly advice.
Most Mondays we are unable to see every one that needs to be seen. This is despite resourcing an increase in the
number of workers through our reserves. Our waiting list for women that seek advice
on housing, welfare, money and debt is ever-increasing. Some of the issues have
been the changes in housing and tax credits already implemented. Many women are
already coming to see us because they are anxious about the introduction of
Universal Credit System and wonder if their families will be able to survive.
According to recent research commissioned by the TUC, single mums will
lose 18.5 per cent of their income through cuts
-60% of our users are single mums.
These are women that are already struggling
to survive in a world that stigmatises them as “benefit scroungers” In reality,
the employment rate of Latin Americans
(85%) is much higher than the average of 61% and only 1 in 5 Latin Americans
claims welfare benefits (much lower than the average). Our most vulnerable
women, who often have high levels of education, struggle to make ends meet and
work in low paid, low skilled jobs.
The truth is that women, ethnic minorities,
disabled people, younger people, older people and other discriminated people
are the ones bearing the brunt of the government’s welfare reforms. This will only continue increasing demand for
advice services and will put enormous pressure on voluntary organisations such
as the Latin American Women’s Rights Services and many others.
The true measure of a Government is the way
it treats women and its minorities. How are we treating
ours?
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