Chapter 18: Help with ground rent, service charges and other housing costs

This book is free online thanks to a partnership with Barclay's Bank.

Despite struggling to make ends meet, many families do not claim all the financial support to which they are entitled.

This new edition of Financial Help for Families: what you need to know is for you if you work with families and want to help maximise their income or deal with a benefit problem. It covers all the main social security benefits, as well as other important financial support for children, such as child maintenance and help with childcare and school costs. The book would be particularly helpful to advisers working with survivors of domestic violence – with new content prepared with them in mind including the support available to a person leaving an abusive situation.

You don’t have to be a benefits expert – the book is clear and understandable for everyone. It contains plenty of examples to help explain the benefit rules, tactics on what to do if the amount of benefit has been reduced or if payments are delayed and a useful glossary of terms.

The Welfare Rights Bulletin is CPAG's journal of welfare benefits and tax credits law and practice. It is also an updating service for our Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook.

In this issue:

-Benefits and coronavirus – the end?
-UC and refugee family reunion
-Latest offers – PIP appeals
-Tax credits: return of the living debt
-What childcare really costs on universal credit

The journal aims to stimulate debate about the nature, causes and consequences of child poverty in the UK, and potential solutions.

Inside this issue:

- Child mortality and deprivation in England
- The merging of knowledge: empowering and enabling
- Making change together

The annual Benefits for Students in Scotland Handbook is the most comprehensive guide to benefits and tax credits for students in Scotland.

It includes a quick guide to the grants and loans available for further and higher education in Scotland, and clear, easy-to-use information on students’ benefit entitlement and how this is affected by their student income as well as the introduction of universal credit and new Scottish social security benefits. Also included is information on how benefits are affected in vacations and if a student takes time out from their course.

Fully updated for the 2021/22 academic year, the book is an invaluable resource for anyone who advises students in Scotland. It is fully cross-referenced to the law and includes easy-to-use checklists and examples.

The annual Children’s Handbook Scotland provides a complete guide to the benefits and tax credits that apply when children are living away from their parents, including children in kinship or foster care, children looked after by the local authority, and children at residential school, in residential care or in hospital.

It covers entitlement when children are living away from home, how local authority payments affect carers’ benefits and tax credits, and how to challenge decisions. Fully referenced to legislation and caselaw, and with easy-to-use checklists and examples, this latest edition remains an essential guide for anyone working with families and children in Scotland.

The Welfare Rights Bulletin is CPAG's journal of welfare benefits and tax credits law and practice. It is also an updating service for our Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook.

In this issue:

-‘Old-style’ ESA: who can get it?
-Holes in the safety net: benefits and claimant deaths
-Crossing the language barrier of UC
-The UC work allowance
-Too late for a backdate?

Now in its 19th edition, this Big Book offers 500 pages of user-friendly practical information, tips, tools, tactics, health assessment forms (page by page guidance and tips), effective support letters, caselaw and example appeal submissions.

An essential resource to help make your own claims or support those for others, especially if living with mental health issues.

​New/Updated for 2021/22:​

​Benefit changes: revised and updated overview and charts covering recent pandemic and other changes and a new chapter on the HMRC Emergency Coronavirus Support Schemes.

​Personal Independence Payment: the latest on anti-mental health discrimination, change in assessments processes, case law, and a new approach starting in Scotland later in 2021

​Sickness benefits: Making sense of the sickness benefits scene - what is going and what stays; issues when swapping from income-related ESA to UC, how the ESA/UC Work Capability Assessment works with page by page guidance through an example form, how to effectively support and challenge claims and ESA changes in doing that.

​Universal Credit: now split into two. Part 1: a practical guide to how UC works, moving over to it, claiming, the UC sums, practical tips and pitfalls to avoid in surviving UC. Part 2: separates out more complex and problem areas into their own chapter alongside reports and calls for change.

The journal aims to stimulate debate about the nature, causes and consequences of child poverty in the UK, and potential solutions.

​Inside this issue:​

- Child poverty and policy in the US and the UK
- Hindrance or help? Social security and work
- Discretion, dignity and choice: free school meals

The Welfare Rights Bulletin is CPAG's journal of welfare benefits and tax credits law and practice. It is also an updating service for our Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook.

In this issue:

-NINos: law, policy and legal challenge
-UC and deductions: recent changes
-Revisiting the UC grace period
-Child disability payment in Scotland
-Universal credit for veterans with disabilities

Published in association with Glasgow Caledonian University SPIRU and WiSE Centre, The Poverty Alliance and I-SPHERE, Heriot-Watt University​

Poverty in Scotland 2021: towards a 2030 without poverty.

Scotland has set statutory targets towards ending child poverty by 2030, and the Scottish government has made wider commitments to eradicating poverty and hunger altogether. Poverty in Scotland 2021 provides a comprehensive but accessible state of the nation assessment of how far the country has come in achieving these goals, and what is now needed to make them a reality.

The book draws on the latest data and evidence to give an overview of the scale, nature and extent of poverty, and the impact it has on people and communities. Chapters explore:

How poverty in Scotland is defined and measured
What causes poverty in Scotland, and whether that poverty is falling
How policies and processes are working to tackle poverty
The extent to which the lived experience of poverty is shaping policy

Over a million of Scotland’s citizens, and nearly one in four of its children, were still living in poverty before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic struck. This indispensable book brings together contributions from leading experts, academics and practitioners to set out how various policy tools, from public finance, economic development and social care to social security, employment and transport can now be utilised to ensure the ambition of a Scotland free of poverty is realised.

Poverty in Scotland 2021 is the latest in a series providing an essential resource for politicians, policy makers, teachers, community activists, service providers, academics, students and all those working to end poverty.