At The Social Change Agency, we believe that people deserve to access appropriate remuneration for work. That’s why we’re excited to be working with York MCN Network to design and deliver a fair, equitable and just payment for involvement policy for people receiving benefits in York. 

Are you interested in setting up a payment for involvement policy? Do you have good ideas you want to share? Click here to join our learning community and support our work. 

In the social impact sector, organisations are increasingly keen to involve and collaborate with people with lived experience of the issues they are working on. For years this has often been based on the assumption that people with lived experience will undertake this work voluntarily. However, if an organisation has equitable practices at its core, fair remuneration for work must be a priority.

In some cases, receiving payment for involvement could cause someone to be seen as no longer eligible for benefits

However, even where there is a will, there may not necessarily be a way. Organisations wanting to implement a payment for involvement policy will likely come across many bureaucratic processes in order to make this acceptable for auditors and comply with accountancy, finance and risk management processes.

Where remuneration is in place, it doesn’t always come with the necessary support for people receiving benefits, in order to ensure that remuneration doesn’t cause problems with payments. In some cases, receiving payment for involvement could cause someone to be seen as no longer eligible for benefits, resulting in their payments being stopped. Lack of support to navigate the system and troubleshoot errors with payments can be particularly hard for those who may have negative associations or experiences with DWP, JobCentres, or other formal institutions and organisations.

At The Social Change Agency, we believe that everyone deserves to access appropriate remuneration for work. It’s why we don’t have an internship programme, offer financial remuneration to people taking part in workshops and support work on equitable access to participation in civic life. We believe that equitability means that there should be parity around remuneration for work. 

However, there is a very thorny systems challenge that arises when when you want to hold this policy and the person you are working with is receiving benefits. More often than not, there are currently a number of hoops that they must jump through in order to do this safely and legally. 

That’s why we’re excited to be working with York MCN and Lankelly Chase Foundation to design a fair, equitable and just payment for involvement policy for people receiving benefits in York. 

York MCN is a network that has been running since 2018. It involves various projects, organisations and people coming together to create change, with the aim of improving the lives of people experiencing multiple complex needs across the city.

We are calling all those who are interested to join our learning group and support this work as we delve into unchartered territory.

Together with York MCN, we are planning to design and deliver a collaborative process involving multiple local stakeholders and people with lived experience to develop the policy. However, our initial research has shown that this issue extends far beyond York MCN and although we are creating a bespoke model created specifically for the needs of York, we hope to develop a policy that can be replicated and adapted by other organisations facing a similar challenge.  

This work has been funded by Lankelly Chase Foundation.