Transcript Unite Community Centre Barnsley

Unite Community Centre
Barnsley
Annual Report
Introduction
 The community centre in Barnsley, during its first 12 months,
(opened in June 2013) has truly embraced Unite’s concept of
building unity across the working class through its initiative in
reaching out to the community. The services are not only for the
people of Barnsley but to the wider community of South
Yorkshire & beyond.
 Unite’s primary objective is to ensure that:

“It’s value of solidarity, dignity and respect are at the heart of
community”
 The Barnsley Centre has both echoed & implemented Unite’s
summer/autumn 2013 newsletter which set out this objective. It
has developed an organisation that’s is both confident and
powerful enough to protect the vulnerable whilst winning on
issues that are important to them & their communities.
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Welfare Benefits
 Unite is committed to serving the best interests of its members and
will seek to improve their standard of living and the quality of their
lives through the services we provide in the centre. We are
pleased to report since starting the initiative we have dealt with
many diverse issues and subjects affecting the people we
represent. These include
 Closed Cases:
 61 cases have been dealt with and been closed.
 500 calls attended in relation to making Appointments
and solving various problems for e.g. PIP forms,
Council Tax Payment Settlement, Energy Bills
Payment Plan Settlement, Solicitors Appointment etc.
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Subjects Dealt With since opening:
Description
Cases
Closed Cases
61
Open Cases
26
Description
Cases
Employment Support Allowance
30
Job Seekers Allowance
10
Housing Benefit
7
Employment Rights
7
Benefits Check
7
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Description
Cases
Vibration White finger
5
Disability Living Allowance
5
Rent / Council Tax Arrears
3
Centre Advice
2
Benefit Enquiries for Polish
Clients
4
Carers Allowance
1
Debt Consolidation
2
Homeless
1
Working Tax Credit
1
Tax / PAYE
1
Incapacity Benefit
1
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Training

The training was offered to whole of the Yorkshire area
and attended by all range of members from the South
Yorkshire community. In the training we made sure that
all the aspects were covered.
The training courses
offered are as follows
 Welfare Reform Overview
 Universal Credit
 ESA

The welfare advice training was held at Unite the
Union’s regional office in London. Volunteers from Unite
community centre Barnsley, (Richard Vivian and M.
Tariq), designed the training which lasted for two days.
In the training we made sure that all the aspects of
welfare rights and benefits were covered also with the
emphases on what benefit advice is about, being a
competent advisor and how the advice should be given.
The core values, campaigning around benefits and
protecting client’s rights and advisor client privilege
(Data Protection) was also explained.
16 people
attended the training and the venue and the
arrangements for the training were fantastic and state of
the art equipment was offered for the IT support.
Pilgrim, the organiser of the course did a marvellous job
over all.
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 Unite Community members have
just completed their two days
training on Welfare Rights, provided
by the Child Poverty Action Group.
This will help us continue our vital
work in our communities, supporting
people who are suffering under the
Con-Dem’s cruel and unnecessary
welfare reform. Educate, Agitate,
Organise!
http://www.cpag.org.uk/
 In house training at Barnsley on
various subjects are offered on a
regular basis
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Visits, Cooperation & involvement within the
community

We have had visits from other centres from different
parts of the region as well as South Yorkshire. We
facilitated visits from Durham, Sheffield, Leeds,
Doncaster. Midlands, North West and Scotland. We
discussed and shared experiences and best practice
methods that have been carried out in the Barnsley
centre with a view to helping to establish new
community centres in other communities.

We have been actively collaborating with other
organisations, local community centres seeking to
develop a more pro-active and solid relation with
industrial branches to help and support the community
as much as we can. We collaborate with the local food
banks to help meet the needs of the people who are
either being sanctioned by the Job Centre.

We refer people to food banks and vice versa and
discuss with them on why we need to ensure that food
banks are no longer needed in the better future that we
are trying to build for our children
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 Unite Community activists have been out in the
community spreading the message about the
Community Support Centre. The Freezing
weather didn’t stop a dozen or so activists from
leafleting around Peel Square in Barnsley,
where members of the public told us of the
difficulties either they, or their friends & families
were experiencing because of welfare cuts and
the hated bedroom tax.
We encouraged
people to join Unite and spread the word
around so that we can be considerable force
for change.
 The day was a great success, with our activities
being reported in the Barnsley Chronicle,
Dearne FM And Radio Sheffield. On the second
day of activity, we took our message out to
Worsbrough Common and Honeywell estates,
delivering leaflets throughout the estates and
arranging for posters to be displayed in a
number of local shops, businesses and the
local Workmen’s Club.
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Success Stories: Welfare Benefits
We cannot win all the time but by taking a claimant through the
process of claiming and appealing at Tribunals we are helping that
person regain their dignity and showing that we do care. Here are a
few of our many ‘successes’
Mr R: was one of our first members seeking help on his Working
Tax Credit – we managed to recover a total of £4,795.68 from
HMRC on behalf of Mr R
Ms C : By successfully claiming Personal Independence Payment
and Carers Allowance and also winning a Bedroom Tax appeal we
increased her benefits by £184.80 per week. She joined Unite.
Ms P: Successful tribunal hearing gained Ms P the points she
needed for her ESA and increased her benefits by £28.45 per week
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Learning

Although the centre has been open for one year, we did not begin with computer
training until the first computer class began on the 10th July. Initially we were using
lap top computers and had many problems with internet connection. We were using
a mobile router which was not sufficient to support the 5 people we had at that time
learning. Since then we have our own dedicated internet connection.

Brian Rankin a unite ULR was very supportive in getting the computer course up
and running. In total we have had 13 people on courses plus people who come in
for one session for assistance in setting up an e-mail address and to help with
writing a CV.

We started people on the Learn My Way, Computer Basics which is good for people
who have never used a computer or who are nervous and want help. Three people
moved on to Learn with Unite ICT. Unfortunately most of our clients do not wish to
do something as formal.

We have two women wanting to begin the ESOL course but this is taking a long
time for us to get started, for various reasons. We believe that once the ESOL
course is set up we can recruit more learners. We had a young man assisting for a
few weeks, Gareth Skelt, fortunately for him he secured employment and so we lost
him.
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Campaigns
 Our campaigns have concentrated around the effects of
Government cuts to working people. We have assisted and
supported the local Barnsley campaign against the Bedroom Tax,
joined protests by the Community and unwaged on Zero hours
contracts and Workfare across South Yorkshire. We have also
supported workers taking industrial action against their employer
and the government in our own and other unions through South
Yorkshire Unite Community Branch. We are now launching a
campaign to encourage and assist benefit claimants to take up
their rights to claim and receive Discretionary Housing Payments
and Local Welfare Assistance in Barnsley.
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Tribunals & Appeals
 WE can help claimants who are able to do so , prepare and
conduct their own appeal. By enabling this to be done we are
helping the claimant understand the benefits system and give
them the confidence to take on the system when injustices and
mistakes are made
 Claimant who are unable or have more complex appeals can
have the support of the centre as above plus representation at
the Tribunal.
Advice, support and representation is not subject to Unite
membership, however we encourage claimants to join Unite and join
the fight against benefit cut and legislation such as the “bedroom
tax”
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Appeals
Appeals
Total
Won
Lost
Employment
Support
Allowance
6
4
Working Tax
Credit
1
1
Disability
Living
Allowance
2
1
Bedroom Tax
5
2
Upper
Tribunal
(pending)
2
2
3
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