About The CampaignWhat we are fighting for
Campaigning for Changes
We campaign around 3 areas:
- Reform of the benefits system - to remove the barriers to work, taking away the need for cash-in-hand employment. These barriers exist in the structure of the benefits system and in the way it is administered through the jobcentre.
- Formalising cash-in-hand work - to make it easier for people to move from informal to formal work, harnessing people's willingness to work rather than penalising them for trying to make ends meet.
- Changing attitudes - amongst the public and decision-makers towards the informal economy, highlighting the crucial role it plays in many people's lives.
The informal economy plays an important part in the lives of people who live in deprived areas. We need the government, local authorities, business and the voluntary and community sector to start working together to address these complex issues with a comprehensive response to support more people to make the move into formal paid work.
Jess Steele, Head of Consultancy, Development Trust Association
People in Poverty feel their life is a series of no entry signs"
Communicating Poverty Report, UKCAP
What’s really stopping people from working is not irresponsibility. It is more complex than what we can see through statistics, wider than what numbers represent. When someone is forced to work ‘off the books’ because they don’t have all the papers needed to work legally; when fear and lack of confidence have become so deep; despite all of the effort to make both ends meet; getting into work can be impossible.
ATD Fourth World, UK
European Round Table on Poverty and Exclusion, Marseille, France
October 2008