In this short video Director of Society Matters cic, Jayne Graham MBE, gives us a little insight into why Society Matters is playing such an important role in making the social welfare system work, and how you can get involved.
If you’d like to know more about the work of Society Matters cic, and how you can get involved in supporting our Pay it Forward Charity Discount Fund click here
The team at North East social enterprise Society Matters cic has decided to take positive action to support the community and voluntary sector to access its critical social welfare training by asking for donations into a Charity Discount Scheme that has been launched today.
“Local charities and voluntary organisations play such an important role in supporting people who are facing life challenges that, let’s be honest, would be difficult for most of us to comprehend. Before Covid-19 those problems existed, but now demand on the community and voluntary sector is even greater than ever. The Pay It Forward Charity Discount Fund is our call to the people who would love to help but aren’t sure how to do it.”
By contributing to the Pay It Forward Charity Discount Fund, donors will be directly supporting charities and local voluntary groups to build their social welfare knowledge in areas such as Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments (PIP), so they have the confidence to help the people who approach them for support to navigate these really complex benefits. 100% of hundreds of participants on Society Matters’ courses so far have said that the training will improve their ability to support their clients effectively, so the team is determined to make sure the community and voluntary sector get the best chance possible to make their mark, by having the knowledge they need to help people in the best way possible.
“Knowledge and understanding of benefits across the whole of the social welfare support system is crucially important, but at the moment it is severely limited, and at worst it’s really out of date. Our social welfare training, which has been developed in partnership with our parent charity and social welfare experts Citizens Advice Gateshead, puts this right.”
In an attempt to help the local community and voluntary sector in their local area in Gateshead, the social enterprise recently decided to donate 12 free places to community and voluntary sector organisations in Gateshead for their Get to Grips with Personal Independence Payments (PIP) course which is delivered in a virtual classroom environment. The places were taken up immediately, demonstrating the huge demand.
Then Training Manager Adam Matthews explained about their recent campaign “We couldn’t believe it – the 12 free places were snapped up in a matter of hours and we now have a waiting list of another dozen people or more who need to attend so they can properly support people in their communities. That’s spurred us into action to set up this fund!”
Society Matters works nationally delivering social welfare training to people and organisations in the social welfare system. This includes social housing organisations, employability services, national charities such as CentrePoint, and other organisations you might not expect that want to understand more about the impact of welfare benefits on their customers, such as utility giant Northumbrian Water which recently had staff participating in a Get to Grips with Universal Credit course that’s been shifted online since lockdown.
If you would like to know more about the Pay it Forward Charity Discount Fund and how you can get involved click here.
To make your mark with a donation, please click on the Donate button below, or get in touch to arrange for us to send you an invoice. Every pound counts.
The last 6 months has seen our social enterprise Society Matters cic go from strength to strength, and the demand for our services has been increasing significantly. Despite the outbreak of COVID-19 causing the postponement of UK-wide face to face delivery, we saw a sharp increase in demand for our specialist training in Universal Credit; so rather than be defeated we decided to step up a gear.
We’re delighted to have been able to appoint a new team member, Adam Matthews who has joined us as Social Welfare Instructor for our learning and development programme team.
Lee Booth, Trading Manager
Adam has worked as an adviser for Citizens Advice North Yorkshire for the past few years, so brings with a wealth of experience in welfare benefits, debt and mental health support that he’s keen to share with our customers through our social welfare learning and development programme.
Heather Lee, Chair of the Society Matters board explains “Adam is joining us at a critical time when, now more than ever, more capacity and capability is needed in the system to support an unprecedented number of people who find themselves on Universal Credit due to the effects of the pandemic.”
Alongside Adam’s arrival we’ve also been busy with moving all of our training into a virtual classroom environment. The beauty of the virtual classroom is that we can deliver the training from anywhere to people all over the country, whilst retaining the important element of discussion which allows people to share their knowledge about the complex topics we cover in the training – this helps to embed and deepen knowledge for the group.
We tested our new approach with the support of staff from Northumbrian Water who were keen to understand Universal Credit so they could give even more support to customers struggling to pay their bills. This proved to be a huge success, with really positive outcomes reported in terms of staff learning, engagement and the learning objectives of all of the participants being met. So with their endorsement we are now keen to roll out the training out to other organisations as understanding Universal Credit has never been as important as it is right now.
With the successful migration of our Get to Grips with Universal Credit course online, we have also been busy with the development of a range of other courses and there’s a lot more to follow! Get in touch – we’d love to hear from you if you’d like to know how we can help your organisation to make your mark.