Newspaper clipping taken from page 7 of the South Wales Echo titled 'Benefit problems soaring at centre', reporting on the advice office at South Riverside Community Development Centre and its volunteers, Riverside, Cardiff, 8 August 1986

Description

An article by Deborah Cole describing the work of the advice office at South Riverside Community Development Centre, which "relies heavily on indispensable volunteers".

Their website states: “South Riverside Community Development Centre is a Company Limited by Guarantee and a registered charity based in Cardiff. Set up around 1975, and registered as a charity in 1978, SRCDC bought its premises in 1987 and renovated the Centre building.

The Brunel Street Centre receives an income from room hire, events and office facilities, multipurpose hall and accommodates a wide range of autonomous groups advice facilities and community garden.

SRCDC has piloted and developed several services that have become either separate community organisations (Cardiff Repairs for the Elderly Scheme, Riverside Advice) or have become absorbed into mainstream statutory services.”

Source: www.srcdc.org.uk/ [site under development], accessed 8/5/17.

Transcription:

Benefit problems soaring at centre
By DEBORAH COLE

THE NUMBER OF people taking advantage of the advice office at South Riverside Community Development Centre in Cardiff is increasing.

And most of them come with supplementary benefit problems caused by long delays or difficulty in obtaining help.

Ms Fran Rawlings, a community and advice worker at the centre in Brunel Street, said although the average number of callers at the advice office is more than 150 a month, recently the figures have risen to as many as 243.

She said: “Most people come with supplementary benefit problems. This category makes up 35 per cent of all our enquiries, at times more.

"Because more people are now out of work for a longer period they have to rely more and more on supplementary benefit, not just for daily living expenses but also to renew items of clothing, bedding and household equipment.”

“It is when they apply to the DHSS for these single payments that they encounter most problems. There are long delays in payment, if they receive payment at all. More and more often, people have to turn to outside help to get what they are entitled to by law.”

Because around 3,000 Riverside residents are of Asian origin, the advice centre has many callers who have language problems. Ms Rawlings says they are the only agency in Cardiff to employ Asian-speaking workers, who are called on to help people who have difficulty with English and 15 per cent of these seeking help and advice call specifically to see someone who spoke their own language.

Other agencies like the health service and social services also call on the Asian-speaking advice workers for help - and some people come to the advice centre from as far away as Port Talbot.

They often want help with immigration problems, and the advice office is the only agency covering the area of work, she says.

The advice office is just one of a range of projects operating from the community centre. A Riverside improvement team employs six people, a link worker scheme employs two Asian women on a part-time basis to visit Pakistani and Bengali women at home, and a multi-cultural mums and toddlers group has another part-time Asian worker.

A home tutoring scheme employs a part-time coordinator to train and supervise volunteers to teach English to Asian women who cannot leave their homes. The advice office itself has two full-time workers and four part-time administrative staff, but relies heavily on indispensable volunteers.

The advice office operates on a first-come, first-served basis in the mornings on weekdays, but appointments are available in the afternoons between 2pm and 4.30pm. On Tuesdays and on Friday mornings advice is at hand for people who speak Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi but have difficulty with English.

Supplementary benefit was a means-tested benefit paid to the unemployed, sick, single-parents, carers and pensioners. It was replaced by Income Support in 1988.

From Microform, Local Studies, Cardiff Library.
Image created by The British Library Board.
Copyright: Media Wales.