The minutes of the January 2021 GMWRAG virtual meeting are now available for download.

So, GMWRAG finally managed to go to Oldham and survive. Nobody froze. Nobody foolishly tried to get there by bus rather than tram (or at least, if they did, they have yet to turn up so we won’t worry about it). We could get used to “virtual Oldham”. It was almost tropical (and likely will be by 2050).

As if the above sequence of events were not unusual enough – GMWRAG meeting; virtual GMWRAG; and no 10 minutes of brewing up whilst you thaw out – we now have actual minutes available for download prior to your next virtual funscape in Stockport.

Minutes as ever can be downloaded from our famed/notorious Minutes of previous meetings page. Notorious because of course it is password protected. Every time we say this we are deluged (well okay, it’s usually the same four people) asking what the password is and the same one person asking “but why is it password protected?”

The answer to the former is always “Contact us” whilst the answer to the latter is that having professional contact details in the minutes has resulted in several claimants contacting GMWRAG members directly to request advice even when the claimant does not live in the Greater Manchester area. Indeed the latest of these incidents has occurred just today. So, for now, minutes will remain password protected.

Of course GMWRAG is not the last word in end to end encrypted comms so we will apologise in advance for those occasions this goes horribly wrong.

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GMWRAG has whispered. Who will heed the whisper?

So, the poll results are in and GMWRAG members have responded with a resounding whisper in low numbers but, nevertheless, “some numbers”. Indeed, more people voted than have attended some GMWRAG meetings on occasion (!) so we’ll go with it and declare ourselves quarantined or quorate or quixotic or quite easily pleased or whatever the term is.

And the verdict is:

• you want virtual meetings but you’d also entertain a virtual social.
• Zoom is very much the tool of choice.
• most of you would prefer to stick with the traditional “GMWRAG Friday” despite the efforts of others to screw that up. NAWRA, we’re looking at you (sternly).

So, by our reckoning we have missed meetings in Bolton, Manchester and Trafford with Oldham to come in September 2020.

We fully appreciate that circumstances may reduce the number of services capable of running a virtual meeting but GMWRAG hosts should know where they are on the meetings list – here’s a reminder – and the process has long been that hosts organise their own meeting and provide a chair and minute taker.

So, the big question now is who will step up and set us going once again? GMWRAG members, we’re looking at you.

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GMWRAG Greater Manchester Universal Credit Forum in Oldham – a quick reminder.

GMWRAG looked out of the window and there was fog and frost. “It’s January” we thought. Then we thought “Oldham. Somehow we always end up in Oldham in January”. We never quite manage to identify the culprit!

Oh yeah. “Happy New Year GMWRAG members!”

All this is a roundabout way of reminding you lovely people that the first ever GM UC Forum takes place in Oldham on the 25th of this month. We’re already aware that at least 6 DWP staff involved with UC locally or regionally will be in attendance and numbers of confirmed attendees are already above 20. The agenda has been confined to two items plus AOB so GM related UC issues can be addressed in depth.

Full details of the meeting (location, timings, agenda etc.) can be found at https://gmwrag.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/initial-details-of-the-first-meeting-of-the-gmwrag-greater-manchester-universal-credit-forum/ and we would ask you to pay particular note to the request that people email GMWRAG to let us know that you are attending.

If you have already done this PLEASE don’t do it again as it makes life far more complex than is needed.

GMWRAG would like to remind members to remember that this is Oldham in January. Layers will be required. Good advice can be found here. Treating it as a day out doing “sedentary ice fishing” will give you a good idea of what’s required.

On a more serious note, Oldham is well served by roads and trams so it’s, er, easy to escape from 🙂

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DLA and PIP caselaw for visual impairment.

At the June 2017 Stockport meeting GMWRAG members had a rare opportunity to look directly at issues around hearing and sight impairment in relation to DLA for children and PIP.

Presentations have previously been circulated from both speakers and made available via a post here on the 4th of July 2017. However, for reasons which escape, but which are most likely wholesale incompetence, the presentations have not been made available on a permanent basis in our “presentations and notes” page. Indeed, we had managed to turn the menu item for this off in our Meetings section. Good to see no-one noticed 🙂

Anyway, a number of requests have been made for the case law pack for people with a sight impairment, improvised for the session, to be made properly available. Additionally a number of GMWRAG members have contributed new decisions to be added so, we have been able to produce an updated edition. Nowt special but it’s as good a place as any to start. You can download it from here and find it permanently here, which is a different “here” if you see what we mean. We have also added the NDCS new line on PIP and safety document to the same place.

In other news we appear to have posted up the minutes of the Oldham meeting and then completely forgotten to add them to the minutes section of the web site. Fixed it now.

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Update on the roll-out of Universal Credit.

GMWRAG has been handed this handy little updated document detailing when various parts of the North West will finally experience the joy of full service Universal Credit. It looks as follows but you can download from the link above. If anyone hears of any changes to this please DM us via @GMWRAGTweets.

If anyone from Oldham would like to get in touch and maybe contribute an article about how things have been going since April then we’d be more than happy to publish.

Seems like a good moment to remind people of our hugely popular previous post on the high quality videos available about Universal Credit too.

April 2017	Oldham
July 2017	Trafford Cheshire East – Crewe Cheshire West & Chester – Chester
October 2107	Manchester – Alex Park, Didsbury, Rusholme
Nov 2017	Manchester – Newton Heath, Town Hall, Openshaw
Dec 2017	Cheshire West & Chester – Ellesmere Port, Neston, Northwich
Feb 2018	Rochdale
March 2018	Stockport Tameside Cheshire East – Congleton, Macclesfield
April 2018	Wigan
May 2018	Manchester – Cheetham Hill, Wythenshawe Bury
June 2018	Salford
July 2018	Bolton

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The minutes of the Stockport GMWRAG meeting are now available.

The minutes of the June 2017 GMWRAG meeting which took place in Stockport are now available for download from here and of course you can find them permanently on our Minutes page for which you will of course have the magic password. If you don’t then please either DM @GMWRAGtweets or email a GMWRAG member and they’ll be happy to oblige provided you are willing to delete, set fire to or eat any related communications.

The handouts from the session on hearing impairment and PIP can be found here and the case law pack from the session on sight impairment and DLA/PIP can be found here.

The next GMWRAG meeting is scheduled for Oldham in October 2017 and we’ll post up all the information you’ll need as soon as everything has been finalised.

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New job being advertised on the GMWRAG web site.

Oldham Council are advertising for a part-time Welfare Rights Officer as follows:

Welfare Rights Officer

Ref: COM16/68238

Employer: Oldham Council

Location: Oldham Civic Centre, West Street, Oldham, OL1 1NL

Salary: £24,717 – £29,033 p.a.

Salary Grade: 6

Working Pattern: Part Time

Working Hours: 18.67 hrs per week

Contract Type: Permanent

Closing date: 17/10/2016 23:59

Job Type: Administration/Clerical, Customer Service, Case Officers

Interview Date: TBC

Full details can be found on the Your Council Jobs site and a job description can be downloaded from here. The same details can be found on the GMWRAG web site on our Job Vacancies page.

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