Hackney mental health charity Mind given £130,000 to help clients with Universal Credit applications
A file image of a job centre in east London. Picture: Philip Toscano/PA Archive - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images
A mental health charity in Hackney has been given a £130,000 grant to help people navigate their Universal Credit applications.
Mind in the City, Hackney and Waltham Forest will use the money to run a new welfare rights service.
The charity has been offering welfare rights advice for 20 years but applied for extra cash to help deal with the devastation caused by the government's online single-payment system.
Since 2017 Mind has helped its service users claim £390,000 they would otherwise have not received.
Welfare rights lead Finn Keaney said: "Hackney is a diverse borough with some of the highest rates of poverty and health inequality across the capital, and as such has seen residents suffer greatly from government welfare policy, which seems more focused on unemployment statistics than the survival of marginalised people.
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"With this new grant, Mind CHWF's Universal Credit Advice Service will aim to meet the huge demand for person-centred, specialist benefits advice for vulnerable residents navigating the welfare system."
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