A win for Sean

THE appointment of Sean Williams as Welfare Officer in November 2014 (Welfare Officer appointed) marked a major milestone in the Trust's acknowledgement of its responsibilities, writes Allan Richards.

Since his appointment, Sean has been working towards making information available to front-line staff such that they can deal with welfare issues. Often this can be as simple as pointing people in the right direction to get help.

No policy

It was just over a year ago that Canal & River Trust admitted that it had no policy for dealing with vulnerable people (No vulnerable boaters policy). In a written response to National Association of Boat Owners (NABO) Simon Robbins, the Trust admitted that it had no formal procedures, policies, guidance or other standing instructions.

The eviction of mentally ill boater, ‘Maggie' who went on to sleep in a tent after the Trust took her boat, and the Trust's treatment of other disadvantaged, vulnerable and even terminally ill boaters led to a petition that gained considerable support.

NABO

This may have been the inspiration for NABO's Vice Chairman, Mark Tizzard, stating:

‘For a charity that seeks to increase the number of 'friends', volunteers, bequests etc the one thing you do not want is bad publicity regardless as in this case even if it would appear the law is on your side. This is why their PR office quickly circulated their rebuttal to boating associations and other organisations.

The number of boaters who need support of a social or medical nature (as opposed to just financial) seems to me to be increasing even though the numbers that reach the sanction of having their boat removed is very small.

This is why I strongly support the need for a welfare manager (not officer) I believe this person needs to be skilled in the knowledge of social services, NHS , benefit system works so that he can involve these agencies if needed at an early stage. In my view we need a manager at a level such that the enforcement team have to work through him if the case meets certain criteria. They need to be of a level that can recommend the legal process is deferred whilst an interim solution is found.

I am sure there are vulnerable people on boats who fall under the radar currently and the boating community generally are pretty good at self help but it would help if there was a person who could be contacted for support by boaters, boating associations, chaplains, dog walkers, enforcement officers, volunteers etc.

Some boaters might need help to get back on land where better care/facilities may be available. Others might need a helping hand to obtain benefits to which they might be entitled that would help them either continue cruising or fund a mooring.

CaRT is not and should not be a housing association or social service but it needs to recognise that if some of its customers are in trouble they in turn have a problem. I support the principle of enforcement of the terms of the cruising licence but just think a little less spent on subsidising partnerships, taking a small bite out of the £1.5m towpath management budget or better still some of the money saved as a result of the recent resignation of the CaRT legal director being spent on a skilled manager would pay dividends here both for boaters and as a genuine good bit of PR for CaRT.'

The idea was supported by other boating organisations.

Sean had a meeting with NABO and made a short presentation at the recent Press Briefing at Hatton.

Unreported

Whilst much of the work in this area will go unreported, for rather obvious reasons of confidentiality, Mark Tizzard has outlined one very recent case where a continuous cruiser was subject to Section 8 (i.e. in danger of having his boat seized and being expelled from CaRT's waterways) due to not having a licence.

Sean Williams intervened, with court proceedings being put ‘on hold'. He arranged for a representative of Workplace Matters (Helping the needy boaters) to accompany the boater to a meeting with council and his appeal against their initial decision to refuse housing benefit for the boat license was overturned.

As Mark says ‘That's one less court case and one boat owner able to continue living on his boat!'

... and some well deserved positive publicity for the Trust.