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
- ecompassing 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 to 17 if meet the qualifying criteria for UC housing costs or HB)
- applicant is a 'resident' in the Southend City area. Where 'resident' means someone who lives in a property in the Southend City Council area 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 the City and is being supported by Southend-on-Sea City Council. However, a 'resident' cannot be someone who has been placed by another Authority in the City area and is being supported by that other Authority