Edwina O’Hart reports on progress made in phase one of the Your Benefits are Changing campaign and the lessons learned for phase two
When I started in the housing sector in 2007, 12 people held a dedicated communication role. Six years later and there’s now a network of around 50 and a real commitment by the sector to invest in and build teams to communicate more effectively with tenants, staff and stakeholders. with the introduction of the Welfare Reform Act, this couldn’t be more timely.
The changes are numerous and the issues are complex. The sector in Wales, led by Community Housing Cymru, has been proactive in understanding and explaining the reforms and leading on the Your Benefits are Changing (YBAC) communications campaign launched at the end of 2012.
The campaign aims to support members to communicate clear and consistent messages, urge tenants to seek advice, work in partnership with relevant organisations and raise awareness among our stakeholders about the work we are doing to mitigate against these changes.
The Welfare Reform Act has also provided us with the opportunity to challenge people’s perceptions of benefit claimants. Programmes such as Channel 4’s Benefits Street and other media outlets are stirring the debate about the deserving versus the undeserving poor and resorting to lazy stereotypes.
The campaign has now been running for 15 months. As we embark on the next phase, preparing for universal credit, it’s a chance to look back and evaluatewhat has worked and what we’ll do differently going forward.
Looking back
We knew that the bedroom tax was being introduced on 1 April and that the new powers in the Welfare Reform Act enabled the DWP and local authority housing benefit teams to share data with landlords for purposes connected with a welfare service, which meant we knew who was going to be affected.
We believed a two-pronged approach was the way forward to deal with the changes: awareness raising and advice provision for those affected.
There was no money from the DWP for an awareness raising campaign. This frustrated me greatly because, as we were planning our campaign, it launched a celebrity-endorsed ‘We’re all in’ campaign to inform workers that they would be automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme by their employer. The adverts ran for a month and cost £3.5 million, with the total awareness campaign costing £8.1 million, broadcast to an audience who were mainly in work, online and with access to financial products. The pensions minister admitted at the time: ‘People should know that all they need to do is look out for a letter from their employer.’ So why the need for such an expensive campaign?
We worked with RCT Homes to devise the ‘Your Benefits are Changing’ campaign branding – a non-corporate, non-political brand which featured real tenants affected by the reforms. The tone and language used throughout phase one was positive with a clear message: ‘They’ve found out – so can you.’ This was purposely done because we believed that there was enough stigma attached to being on benefits. We didn’t want to portray those affected as victims, but instead empower them to find out about the changes, seek advice and take control of the situation.
Awareness raising
The paid-for media campaign ran for two months in November 2012 and again in January 2013. It included newspaper adverts, internal bus adverts and radio adverts. A website (www.yourbenefitsarechanging.co.uk) was also set up as part of the campaign. To date it has had 24,000 visitors and 90,000 page views, and the average time spent on the site is just under three minutes. Getting the Facts is the most viewed page since the site went live.
The strength of this campaign has been the partnership approach and posters, postcards, information leaflets and other campaign material were designed and made available to all supporting organisations to raise awareness locally, with new material added or amended as new information became available. This collaborative approach has meant many organisations haven’t had to reinvent the wheel and we’ve all benefited from economies of scale by ordering campaign material in bulk. Shareable content for social media has also been produced, including a video about the bedroom tax and Facebook adverts for Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas and the Six Nations Championship.
Advice and support
We set up a dedicated advice line to coincide with the campaign and, without the expertise of our independent YBAC advice team, this campaign would not have succeeded. All advisors are members of Advice UK and of the Institute of Money Advisors. In addition to providing advice, they have also been invaluable in helping us to monitor the communication channels used in phase one, giving advice on terminology and messaging for phase two and providing us with statistics based on their advice sessions. These include the fact that a quarter of those who’ve called the YBAC advice line are in work, 46 percent are not online, and 84 percent of those affected by the bedroom tax don’t feel that taking in a lodger or moving home is an option for them, to name a few.
So what was achieved?
Some 75 organisations are supporting the campaign and using the branding in some shape or form, including housing associations, local authorities, charities and other third sector organisations. In monetary terms, for every £1 spent on advice provision, £9.77 has been saved for tenants.
The YBAC advice team has given advice to over 4,000 people as a result of the campaign. They have restructured budgets to manage £1.7 million of non-priority debt, identified £1.3 million of water related debt, helped almost 700 people to claim a Warm Home Discount and identified £390,000 of unclaimed benefits. Of callers to the advice line, 51 per cent were housing association tenants, 21 percent were local authority tenants, 22 per cent were private tenants and 6 per cent were home owners.
Lessons learned and moving forward
Slipping timescales and lack of data sharing means communicating universal credit is going to be a challenge. However, anything we do now to prepare people, whether
it’s help with budgeting, getting online, opening and using a bank account and getting back into work will not only assist with the transition to universal credit, but help tackle poverty too.
With this in mind and in preparation for phase two, we held workshops at a number of conferences and events including Welsh Tenants and TPAS and issued a survey to supporting organisations. We had almost 700 responses, of which 80 per cent believed that budgeting advice was the key to people coping with universal credit and 70 per cent felt that a wider media campaign should be used to communicate universal credit.
Which communications channels worked? 40 per cent of callers heard about the service via their landlord, 23 per cent from a newspaper, 23 per cent via an event, 7 per cent via social media, 5 per cent via a bus advert and 2 per cent via a radio advert. While newspapers appear to be the most effective paid-for channel, we have no way of ascertaining if this success is down to advertising or the vast amount of editorial secured around this topic. Bus and radio referrals seem low in comparison, but these campaign elements only ran for two months out of the last 15. It is our intention to increase the spread of paid-for activity in phase two and to include elements such as Sky AdSmart and Facebook advertising.
Website versus facebook
The website was initially set up as a resource for tenants. However, through monitoring traffic to the site, we’ve discovered that the majority of visitors are from organisations such as Welsh Government, local authorities and housing associations. It is widely noted that a
high percentage of social housing tenants are not online. While 46 percent of those who’ve phoned the YBAC advice line have confirmed this, they answer ‘yes’ to having access to Facebook, so there is perhaps a lack of awareness about what constitutes being online.
We will develop our social media presence in phase two, holding social media advice sessions at various times of the day and on weekends. We have looked at online resources currently available and have commissioned two new videos as a result of our findings. These will be shared via social media and we will also be trialling Facebook advertising to coincide with the introduction of universal credit in Shotton in March.
The YBAC money advisors attended 40 events across Wales last year and, in collaboration with partners, we aim to mirror that this year. Watch out for our YBAC Money Bus as it tours Wales throughout the summer! We will also be increasing awareness via PR-led communication and political engagement activities. Cutting housing benefit to the under 25s will be a topical issue around the general election next year and we’ve teamed up with Llamau to campaign against this. We will also be working hard to highlight the impact of the policy on staff, making the links with effects on mental health.
Planning is well underway and we need to continue with the collaborative agenda to ensure we are doing all we can to prepare the half a million people in Wales estimated to be affected by universal credit. Interestingly we also asked respondents who should let people know about the changes to welfare: 52 per cent said the UK Government, 20 per cent said
Welsh Government, 14 per cent said local authorities, 9 per cent said landlords and 5 per cent said charities. YBAC is being driven by the latter three – is it time for the UK and Welsh Government to provide more support?
Edwina O’Hart is head of communications at community Housing Cymru. if you would like to know more about the campaign or would like your organisation to get involved, email her at edwina-ohart@chcymru.org.uk or tweet her at @edwinaoHart #yourbenefits
Since the print version of WHQ went to press, Your Benefits are Changing has launched a petition calling on the DWP to fund a national campaign to raise awareness about welfare reform. For more details and to register your support go here