We’re very pleased to announce that Advice North Somerset’s Social Policy intern, Holly Young, has been awarded funding from the Citizens Advice Research Seed Fund to help her research project “How can we make North Somerset a fairer place to live? Focus on impact of local Council Tax Support scheme.”
The evaluation panel was looking for a clear relationship between readily available local evidence that pointed to a potential issue or hunch, the question to be investigated and how the research proposed would help with building local influence and campaigning for change on the issue. Holly had to outline her thinking on research methods and how these linked into the research question – who would participate in the research and how they would be recruited, whether surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews or other approaches would be used and what kind of information they would be gathering. Awards for similar projects have been made to Camden, East Staffordshire and York CABs and Holly will be working in conjunction with these other projects.
Other awards were made for:
- Seasonal work at the seaside – Not all fun and games?
- Measuring the impact of insecure working hours on income and income based benefit claims
- Tackling the barriers to successful online applications by disadvantaged clients
- The Big Difference Fund: What Works for Vulnerable Water Customers through working directly with Creditors
- Monitoring the introduction of Universal Credit: identifying design and delivery issues through the analysis of claimant journeys
- Am I welcome? An exploration of the experiences of refugees & recently arrived migrants accessing statutory services
- No Benefit on Disability – Focus on Attendance Allowance
- Letting with Confidence – To increase the number of private sector properties accessible to tenants on Housing Benefit