{"id":20078,"date":"2016-07-19T07:15:52","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T06:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=20078"},"modified":"2016-07-19T07:15:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T06:15:52","slug":"half-of-low-income-households-at-risk-of-missing-out-on-vital-welfare-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=20078","title":{"rendered":"Half of low income households at risk of missing out on vital welfare benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You hear a lot of political propaganda in this country and others about how so many people choose to live on welfare benefits as a lifestyle choice when allegedly they could simply go out and obtain satisfying paid work. The reality is, of course, utterly different. It is estimated by the Government itself that the amount of benefits to which UK citizens are entitled but which they do not claim is <a href=\"http:\/\/voxpoliticalonline.com\/2015\/10\/24\/more-than-13bn-in-benefits-is-going-unclaimed\/\">over \u00a313 billion a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I chair a body called the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esan.org.uk\">Essential Services Access Network<\/a>\u00a0and one of our members is a body called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.turn2us.org.uk\">Turn2Us<\/a>.\u00a0New research by the organisation has found that almost half (48%) of low income households are not claiming the welfare benefits and tax credits to which they could be entitled.\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Turn2Us is currently running <\/span><a style=\"line-height: 1.5;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.turn2us.org.uk\/About-Us\/News\/Benefits-Awareness-Campaign-Launches\">a campaign<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\"> to encourage low income households to claim the benefits to which they are entitled.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You hear a lot of political propaganda in this country and others about how so many people choose to live on welfare benefits as a lifestyle choice when allegedly they could simply go out and obtain satisfying paid work. The reality is, of course, utterly different. It is estimated by the Government itself that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20078"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20084,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078\/revisions\/20084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}