Information Literacy and Welfare Reform: challenges and opportunities

Welfare Reform ChallengesInformation Literacy and Welfare Reform was the title of the fifth presentation at the IL Symposium. Gregory Colgan, Head of Corporate Debt and Welfare Reform, Corporate Services Department, Dundee City Council certainly presented a picture of what he called challenges and opportunities around welfare reform. Connected to that is the digital world we live in and the necessary skills people need.

According to Gregory, we are digital by default. Dundee City Council stopped advertising jobs in newspapers, they are all now advertised online. For many other employers the situation will be the same.  

Gregory presented some demographic figures relating to Dundee citizens and benefit claimants, lower income, deprived areas compared to the Scottish averages (see slide 2 for specifics - a link to the presentation is at the end of the posting).

He then went on to list the welfare reform challenges as:

• Universal Credit
• Universal Support Delivered Locally
• Claimant Committment - Day 1 Conditionality
• Universal Job Match
• Job Searches / Activities
• Digital Access / Skills 
• Literacy / Numeracy
• Local access to Services
• Budgeting
• Banking
• In work Benefits

To tackle these challenges Dundee City Council has set up strategic partnerships within and outwith the council that relate or need to respond to Welfare Reform. Included is: Employability and Learning; Supportive Initiatives; Scottish Welfare Fund: Housing Services; DLA to PIP; Universial Credit.

Employability and learning includes upskilling individuals. Equipping locla people with employability skills. Partenrship is seen as key: DWP (Department of Work and Pensions), Libraries and Voluntary Sector. Gregory saw an opportunity for library and voluntary sectors. 

Examples of activities taking place include:

Opportunities Room - This project operates within the Central Library in Dundee, where they have created a space which is around IT, learning and Development. The project also recruits volunteers who train individuals on IT skills.

IT4 Work. This project is funded from the DWP local flexible fund and provides IT support in local community centres to those who are looking to enhance there IT skills to assist them in entering the job market. It is a 6-8 weeks course with Adult Learning Tutors that results in a certificate. Gregory said there was a 'clear referal path from the library to the project'. Some of the quotes on the slide/s showed that it was helping people for example

Browsing from home, I saw a job and applied for it as I now know how to do it. 

I was also interested in the following quote "I go regulalry to Douglas Library, I didn't have the confidence before". Confidence building was an outcome / benefit that John Crawford and I found in a library employability course study. People attedning these course often have had a bad or poor experience of mainstream education resulting in poor confidence.

Another aspect that interested me was using visual digital resources e.g. videos for those who are illiterate. The resources are create by Dundee College with captions for the deaf. I have heard of and seen visual resources created by Dundee College in the form of graphic novels. 

The key message from the presentation was 

Universal credit will be a bit of a challenge to us with information and digital literacy problems. The only way we will make a difference is is we work in partnerships.

I would certainly reiterate and endorse that last sentence. I know from experience the difference partnership working makes. 

Gregory's presentation slides are available on slideshare so please have a look at them.  

For those working in public libraries, they are already seeing some of these challenges particulalry in the present economic climate with the loss of staff and in some places library servcies. I couldn't help but think that for those working in Public Libraries it may seem like a dam is about to burst on them. I not sure if the rest of us are aware of the challenges: I think we are obilvious to the impact the welfare reform will have on libraries. However hopefully Gregory's presentation highlighted some opportunities and strategies that public libraries can take advantage of.