The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a division of the government whose chief aim focuses upon fulfilling its Public Service Agreement (PSA) via the departments Service Delivery Agreement (SDA), which came into fruition in April of this year.
The department has five principal objectives, as can be viewed on www.dwp.gov.uk/aboutus/ and reads as follows:.
To sustain a higher proportion of people in work than ever before, while providing security for those who cannot work .
To halve child poverty within a decade and eliminate it in a generation .
To combat poverty and promote security and independence in retirement for today's and tomorrow's pensioners .
To improve the rights and opportunities for disabled people in a fair and inclusive society .
To modernise welfare delivery so as to improve the accessibility, accuracy and value for money of services to our customers .
In essence, these five objectives have the combined aim of improving the welfare of society as a whole.
The area that I work within is the Income Analysis Directorate part of the Income Analysis team. The IA has five teams that are involved with DWP's very own household survey, the 'Family Resources Survey'. The FRS is used to; produce statistics and analysis of income distribution and poverty; compare the incomes of women to men; and to show statistics on the take-up of income related benefits.
The Income Analysis 1 team manages the Family Resources Survey (FRS), including provision of the database and publication of a report of findings. The FRS collects data on income, benefit receipt and related topics from a sample of about 24,000 households in Great Britain each year. The report is published annually and can be found at www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/frs. .
The other four teams in the department subsequently use the FRS in order to publish their annual reports, with the exception of IA5 whom do not publish a report.
Income Analysis 2 focuses upon the analysis of four main income related benefits: Income support (which can be broken down into non-pensioners and Minimum Income Guarantee for pensioners, now called Pension Credit), Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and Job Seekers allowance.
