About UC:Us
We’re the People Who’ve Been There And Done It…
UC:Us is a group of people in Northern Ireland who receive Universal Credit. Our aim is to share our experiences and insights so that things might change for the better in the future.
We came together in June 2019 as part of a participatory research project which looked at experiences of Universal Credit in Northern Ireland. Researchers Ruth Patrick (University of York) Mark Simpson (Ulster University) and Ciara Fitzpatrick (Ulster University) supported us to share our experiences of Universal Credit and come up with recommendations to improve things.
We came together in a series of workshops where we met other people with expertise in Universal Credit. You can read about our experiences and recommendations on this website and in the research report.
As we talked, we realised that we all had a desire to make changes for the better. This has since led us to explore the many ways we can do that: speaking at events; talking to the media; and meeting with policymakers and politicians.
Many UC:Us members experienced problems at the beginning of our Universal Credit claims. Some of these could have been avoided or addressed if we’d had the right guidance. That is why we have developed the first claimant-led guide to claiming Universal Credit, which is also hosted on this site.
This way, we can help other people who are on UC, just like us.
If you’re new to Universal Credit, the guide will help you understand what you need to do and why. It will also help you recognise when you need expert advice. We hope it will be more accessible than other current sources of information on Universal Credit because it is designed by UC claimants for UC claimants. We hope to help others avoid the problems or knowledge gaps we ran into.
As well as Ruth, Mark and Ciara, UC:Us has been supported by Dan Farley (graphic designer), Hannah Miller (illustrator), Jamie Redman (University of Sheffield), Law Centre NI and Housing Rights NI. Our work has been funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council.