Objectives and key principles, and core eligibility
The primary objective of the fund is to both provide a safety net for those on low incomes who encounter a financial shock and to invest in building local financial resilience to enable individuals and communities to better deal with crises in the long-term, reducing crisis need.
The fund focuses on 4 outcomes:
- Outcome 1: Provision of effective crisis support
- Outcome 2: Improving individuals' financial resilience
- Outcome 3: Bolstering the local-level support landscape
- Outcome 4: Provision of Housing Payments
Key principles of the scheme are that it is:
- person-centred to ensure that people's preferences, needs and values stay central to professional decisions, providing support that is respectful to them
- needs-based to recognise the varied circumstances that individuals may experience, seeking to meet the underlying needs, not just the crisis symptoms
- holistic to provide integrated support that helps the individual and their households, with Authorities considering the wide range of services and actions they have access to.
- encompassing a no wrong door approach to connect individuals to the right service and support through warm referrals, regardless of their initial point of contact
- adopting a trauma informed approach considering the six principles of trauma-informed practice
The core eligibility criteria are;
- applicant is a low income household
- applicant is aged 18 or over (may be able to claim if aged 16-17 if meet the qualifying criteria for UC housing costs or HB)
- applicant is a 'resident' in the administrative area of Essex County Council (ECC) which consists of Basildon, Braintree, Brentwood, Castle Point, Chelmsford, Colchester, Epping Forest, Harlow, Maldon, Rochford, Tendring, and Uttlesford (and excludes the unitary authorities of Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock). A 'resident' is defined as someone who lives in a property in any of these districts or are accessing services such as the Job Centre as if a resident of the area. A 'resident' could also be a person who has been placed outside these districts and is being supported by one of the districts. However, a 'resident' cannot be someone who has been placed by another Authority in these districts and is being supported by that other Authority