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Ask SID - BME

Social Information on Disability
Black & Minority Ethnic Communities

“Making disability information accessible to individuals from Black & Minority Ethnic groups”


June 2009

Equality & Human Rights Commission logo.

A one year project funded by the EHRC (Equality & Human Rights Commission).



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Focus Group 3 - Older People - Benefits Take up


The needs of frail elderly people or older people with support requirements were seen as the most serious of the issues for BME communities investigated by a Surrey survey in 2005. This survey was carried out by PS Consultants, entitled “Consultation with BME Communities” for Surrey Supporting People Team, Surrey County Council. All except 3 of the 17 local community and faith-based groups who responded thought this issue to be either very serious or quite serious. The needs of older BME people are often overlooked by providers as there is an assumption that many “look after their own”.

Older people from within BME communities are often unsure as to their eligibility for benefits and can assume that entitlement would mean an automatic payment. Under claiming of benefits is likely to have a significant impact on the quality of an individual’s life and their ability to make choices about how they lead their lives.

Outcomes from this project:

  1. Worked in partnership with local organisations and facilitated a workshop to identify the best ways of raising awareness and overcoming barriers.
  2. Increased the awareness of the benefit checks available in Surrey via The Pensions Service and Citizen Advice Bureaux outreach programmes, by launching a poster and flyer campaign for the 60+ Muslim population of Woking.
  3. Joined Age Concern England’s BME network and documented details of their current projects to inform future ways of working.

The Statistics

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

One of the first things SID wanted to establish was an estimate of the number of people from BME communities in Surrey aged 60 and over, who claimed benefits of any kind including carers allowance, pension credit, disability living or attendance allowance and so on. By using the 2001 Census and the Office for National Statistics charts we were able to estimate how many BME people aged 60 and over lived in each borough of Surrey - 8000+. We quickly established that ethnic data on benefits is not currently collected for each county or for each age group at either local or national level by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). On a positive note, we spoke to a member of their income monitoring team and were advised that a new steering group committee was being formed to look at what additional information users of their reports were currently asking for. Requests for ethnic data are frequent. We followed up this telephone conversation by letter outlining how useful this data would be in helping organisations to measure the impact of benefit initiatives and thus shape their services for the future. Any changes to the collection of data by the DWP will however take up to 3 years so it will be sometime before we are in receipt of the results.

The Local Perspective

Age Concern.Age Concern Citizens Advice.Citizens Advice

Narinder Ranger runs an Asian Drop in centre in Epsom for the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust called SURAE. They are a membership organisation whose aims are to promote mental health awareness across all South Asian communities in Surrey and parts of Hampshire. Narinder and his team provide advice and support to their members on a number of issues and welcome speakers from external agencies. The Epsom and district network however is not as strong as it could be and he is hoping that they can extend their outreach work soon and improve the situation. His advice relating to the language barrier was not to translate information into other languages. Most people in his experience “get by” speaking and reading in English. Writing it however can often be a problem.

By speaking to Age Concern managers in the areas of Surrey with the highest population of BME elders, we learnt that despite recent initiatives aimed at all residents, they found that making contact with this group was very difficult and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds were seldom seen or spoken to.

Woking has the 4th largest ethnic population of elders in Surrey (after Elmbridge, Reigate & Banstead and Epsom & Ewell) and they are a long established community with notably the first purpose built mosque in Britain, The Shah Jahan Mosque (also known as Woking Mosque) built 1889.

The Citizen Advice Bureau (CAB) in Woking has achieved success through their well respected outreach programme, run by Azhar Hussain, their In House & Outreach Benefits Officer who works full time. Azhar does many home visits and concentrates on working predominantly with Asian groups in Sheerwater and Byfleet. Rosemary Johnson, CAB Woking manager, believes their BME users are now in proportion to the population of the borough and having recruited many advisors, some of whom are volunteers with a wealth of language skills, they don’t feel they need to advertise the service very often. Both Rosemary and Azhar think there is still a tendency for the older BME generation to expect their young family members to find out and access services on their behalf and they therefore see many younger people who come to them as a first port of call.

1. WORKSHOP - “Supporting Older People from BME Groups to Claim Benefits”

It was in Woking that we decided to run our workshop in December 2008, to explore the barriers faced by clients in accessing information and services.

SID worked in partnership with Ann Nicholson, Local Service Delivery manager from The Pension Service and Ghazala Whaheed, Community Development Worker with Surrey Community Action. Ann had recently supported Age Concern Woking to run an outreach event in Sheerwater on benefit claiming and understands many of the issues in reaching BME communities. Ghazala had just completed a report for Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust on why BME people aged over 50 failed to access the mental health services provided and felt that the barriers she had discovered would be similar.

Together, SID and The Pension Service, designed a flyer to publiscise and invite organisations to the workshop, both voluntary and statutory sectors working in the Asian, Muslim and Chinese community. The content for the day was straightforward:

20 people from 14 organisations in and around the Woking area attended the workshop which was held at the Maybury Centre, a venue that hosts many BME community support groups and is located in an area of the town where many Muslims and Asians live. Whilst some of the attendees knew each other by name it was apparent that many had not met face to face and the cooperation and networking that was established at that time continues to work well. At the end of the day‘s discussions many expressed the desire to continue to work on the outcomes as a group which SID was happy to facilitate.

Summary of the main areas of discussion:

  1. What are the barriers to older BME people claiming benefits?
  2. How can we overcome the barriers?
  3. What’s working, what’s not in the Woking area?

A. What Are The Barriers To Older BME People Claiming Benefits?

  1. LANGUAGE - the main barrier. Literacy and ability to read and write their own language is still an issue.
  2. FEAR OF ASKING & STIGMA - there is a stigma about being in receipt of benefits due partly to a sense of pride and worries about “what the neighbours might think”.
  3. KNOWLEDGE - there is a general lack of awareness and information about what to claim, where to go and who to ask.
  4. CONFIDENTIALITY - knowing who to trust with personal information can be very difficult and there are concerns about maintaining privacy.
  5. ACCESS - transport is a problem particularly if you are from a rural area and if you have a disability, as is knowing where to go to ask for help.
  6. BENEFITS COMPLEXITY - perceived general lack of clarity about what is available and when. Letters/leaflets can be unclear as to entitlement, how you qualify and if other benefits may be affected.
  7. PROCESSING TIME - the time taken from the initial form filling to departmental processing and actual receipt of a benefit was thought to be too long. Delays in processing can lead to individual debt and sometimes stoppage of other benefits.
  8. BANK ACCOUNTS - a considerable number of BME elders do not have or want a bank account.
  9. SHIFTING CULTURAL BARRIERS & VALUES - changes to the family set up such as extended families moving apart results in the elderly caring for themselves rather than being cared for by their children.
  10. ILLNESS - this can often cause isolation.

B. How Can We Overcome The Barriers?

Raising awareness through:

C. What's Working, What's Not in the Woking - Surrey Area?

Working together makes a huge difference!

The final group work session asked people to think about how they would promote a poster campaign to increase the take up of benefit checks and to design a poster and flyer specifically for the older BME population. This was a very successful session, the results of which culminated in a campaign being launched by SID in partnership with The Pension Service in March 2009. Overall, the workshop was instrumental in supplying much of the information contained in SID's new guide Black & Ethnic Minority Groups - A quick guide to providing information (in PDF format) (available in hard copy by contacting SID) and our thanks go to everyone for their hard work and creative input.

2. SID’s Poster & Flyer Campaign

Following the suggestions gained from the workshop, SID drew up two designs that were aimed at attracting the Muslim community and sought input and guidance from:

When designing any material for BME communities, it is vital that consideration is given to the fact that each ethnic community is distinct from the other - they must not be grouped together under one BME heading. Nor should we expect to reach them by assuming they will automatically embrace and understand marketing materials that are designed to appeal to the wider population i.e. the white English speaking community. This is a mistake many organisations make and is the main reason why so many initiatives fail to reach the target audience.

We also learnt early on in this project that whilst some people may be able to verbally communicate quite well in English and understand every day language, the complex language used when accessing advice needs interpretation into their mother tongue. Levels of literacy in their own language can be low, leaving English as the only universally acceptable written alternative.

SID was fortunate to be given advice by two key people within Age Concern England, Mark Tomlinson, Developing Advice Coordinator and Clare Ball, National Development Manager, Equalities & Human Rights. Their recent projects (see section 3) have involved members from a variety of BME community groups designing bespoke posters and leaflets on issues such as Mental Health, Health and Home, Healthy Ageing in South Asian, African and Caribbean communities, and How to Claim Benefits. All of these new leaflets are available free of charge and can be ordered by calling Free Phone 0800 00 99 66 or via the website. Their main characteristics are that they are very colourful, visual and above all, have some special meaning and resonance for the specific ‘target group’ for whom they are intended.

Cover of claiming benefits leaflet. As the use of colour is so important, in designing our posters and flyers for the over 60 Muslim community campaign, we used the sacred colour of Islam which is green and placed Islamic imagery in the background (see left).

The emphasis of the text used was to invite people to take up free benefit checks via home visits and to call a local Pension Service helpline manned by staff who speak many languages.

The poster campaign was launched in March 2009 at the Maybury Centre in Woking and attendees from the December 2008 workshop were invited. SID also invited representatives from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Practice Managers from local GP surgeries serving Muslim clients, all of whom have been very positive in supporting the campaign and are actively involved in its promotion. Twenty representatives from ten organisations attended the launch, five of whom brought stands to display their service provision. Quantities of posters and flyers were then provided to all of the relevant groups and The Pension Service and Woking CAB agreed to monitor take up over a period of three months (to the end of June 2009).

Pension Service logo.
SID is very grateful to The Pension Service who sponsored this campaign.



3. Age Concern England’s National Initiative for Improving Benefit Take Up


Age Concern logo.

Mark Tomlinson, Developing Advice Coordinator is based in Leeds with a national remit to manage two projects relating to:

  1. improving benefit take up by BME elders
  2. improving the way community groups interact and work with advice agencies

The first project is for one year and is looking at how to best utilise Advice Agencies (AA’s) in supporting BME elders community groups. It has been recognised that there are few strong links between AA’s and BME community groups and funding longer term dedicated advice workers is difficult.

The expected outcomes from the five pilot groups set up are:

The second project is for 3 years duration and is funded by HBOS bank in Halifax & Huddersfield. Two paid advice workers are running benefit information sessions with community groups and are helping them to build links with AAs. Pre-assessment interviews are held with clients to determine eligibility and avoid disappointment/a failed application and this helps builds a relationship of trust. It also makes sure that individuals know what documentation and information is needed for subsequent appointments.

Expected outcomes:

Summary

1. Workshops attended by all parties involved directly or indirectly in influencing peoples decisions to seek support are one of the best ways of not only raising awareness and gaining collaborative supportive but of sustaining initiatives and developing a long term proactive network.

2. Service Providers have a key role to play in supporting older people to enforce their rights, to gain access to services and to influence the policies and practices that affect the quality of their lives. Knowing who to speak to and where to go for mainstream benefits advice in Surrey is problematic where organisations do not have a specific team or outreach worker who is dedicated to working with BME communities and can speak the prevalent languages e.g. Urdu, Cantonese, Nepalese. Access to interpretation facilities is crucial for some groups of elderly people whose literacy levels tend to be low.

Many of the BME community groups we met reported that they were their members’ first choice for information provision on a wide range of topics. It is therefore crucial that these groups establish close working relationships with the key service providers and vice versa so that a streamlined system of referral is set up and the quality of advice is maintained.

3. Engaging individual community groups to design their own campaign literature is informative and empowering. They are the ambassadors by which information can be disseminated and if they work in partnership with service providers they can help them to prioritise, shape and implement future programmes of support.

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