Funder: Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Awarded: £73,884
Duration: January 2019 – June 2020
Staff involved: Mark Simpson, Gráinne McKeever, Ann Marie Gray, Ruth Patrick (PI, York), Peter Dwyer (York)
Description
This participatory research project will gather experiences of Universal Credit (UC) from claimants in Northern Ireland through the establishment of an ‘experts by experience’ panel, and will support claimants to share their expertise with policymakers and other stakeholders. The participatory approach taken will see claimants involved in every stage of the project, with scope for them to play an active role throughout. The fieldwork is based around five participatory research workshops involving UC claimants, mainly from north and west Belfast.
The research aims to develop claimant-led policy recommendations for UC in NI, and to generate lessons about the distinctive operation of UC in NI that can be shared with policymakers in the rest of the UK.