Universal Credit is a fundamental reform of means-tested working age benefits in the UK. The first stages of the rollout involved single people, meaning that we know much less about the experiences of couples, with or without dependent children.

This webinar will see the launch of the final report from the ESRC-funded longitudinal qualitative research project, Couples balancing work, money and care: Exploring the shifting landscape under Universal Credit, and summarise the key findings.

Rita Griffiths and Fran Bennett, from the research team, will explore the experiences of couples claiming Universal Credit, highlighting the challenges and complexities they faced in arranging their work and care in the context of Universal Credit.

They will explore the extent to which the realities of claimants’ lives matched the assumptions behind the goals underlying the design of Universal Credit, as well as the specific issues facing couples in navigating the mix of joint and individual aspects of its operation and draw out the policy implications arising.

Ryan Shorthouse (Bright Blue) and Kate Summers (LSE) will comment on the research and there will be an opportunity for Q and A and discussion.

Speaker biographies

Rita Griffiths has worked in the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath since 2016 and was lead researcher on this project. Her research interests include social security, active labour market programmes and family relationships in the context of mean-tested benefits. Before moving into academia, Rita was founding partner of a specialist social research consultancy. Between 2000 and 2015, on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, she designed and managed around 40 qualitative research and evaluation studies of government policies targeted on disadvantaged and low-income groups .

Fran Bennett is an Associate Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford. She is also an independent consultant, who has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others; a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences; former Director and Deputy Director of the Child Poverty Action Group; and former policy advisor on UK and EU poverty issues for Oxfam GB.

Ryan Shorthouse is the Founder and Chief Executive of Bright Blue. He is a writer, thinker and entrepreneur, whose research focuses on education and social policy. Many of his policy ideas have been adopted by the UK Government over the past decade. He appears regularly in the national press and broadcast media.

Kate Summers holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), developing new qualitative methods to study social security policy. Her research is concerned with experiences and perceptions of poverty, economic inequality, and related social policies. Her current research projects include Welfare at a (Social) Distance and The Commission on Social Security: Led by experts by experience.

This event will be chaired by Director of the IPR and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Bath, Nick Pearce.