Council set to prioritise fund’s help for most vulnerable
DERBYSHIRE County Council plans to prioritise support for the most vulnerable as it makes changes to its crisis payment scheme.
The cabinet recently noted the consultation results on its plans to re-shape the Derbyshire Discretionary Fund – aimed at welfare and social crisis support – and it approved the adoption of recommended changes to make sure the fund can continue within budget from October 1.
A council spokesperson said: “The current DDF policy is substantially unchanged since 2013. Over that time there have been significant changes to the welfare benefit system, cost of living pressures, and periods of significant additional funding from the UK Government. Requests to the DDF for support have increased considerably compared to pre-pandemic levels.”
The DDF was established by Derbyshire County Council in 2013 and has been successfully deployed at times of crisis as a hardship fund to support residents as part of the council’s emergency response and most recently during flooding.
But the council explained that after a significant amount of Household Support Grant Funding had been discharged by the DDF this significantly raised its profile, which has increased demand on the service while the council faces uncertainty over future Government funding.
New adopted changes now include renaming payment types to ‘crisis payment’, ‘re-settlement grants’ and ‘essential item grants’ and reducing the number of crisis payments awarded in any 12 months to an individual to two payments and increasing the value of each payment to £65 plus £15 per additional household member.
Other changes include removing payments for rent in advance and for travel, and adopting a priority framework to ensure the most vulnerable come first. Results from a consultation between January and March included 79.1 per cent of respondents expressing strong agreement or agreement to prioritising DDF applications based on the applicant’s situation.
The public consultation also recorded 52.3 per cent of respondents said they strongly agreed or agreed with reducing the number of emergency cash payments that can be made to two payments in a 12-month period, while 75.6 per cent said they strongly agreed or agreed with the proposal to increase the payment from £54 for a single person.