Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) welcomes the introduction of the Job Grant, which will provide much-needed support to young people who have been unemployed for six months or more as they start in a job.
The qualifying benefits for Job Grant are amongst the most common areas of advice provided by Scotland’s CAB network. In 2017-18, CAB provided advice on 59,939 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) issues, 19,047 Universal Credit issues, 9,822 Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) issues and 4,460 issues related to Income Support.
This response is based on recent case evidence from Scotland’s CAB network, together with consultation activity carried out with CAB advisers as part of our response to ‘A New Future for Social Security’ in 2016. To inform Citizens Advice Scotland’s response to the proposal for the Job Grant, we discussed the proposals with CAB advisers as part of a consultation event in September 2016, and included questions about the Grant in an online survey of 43 advisers.